Sunjammer

I think the game gets better, then gets worse, then gets better, then gets worse, then gets better, then a LOT better, and then a LOT worse. And then you go to bed because you've played for 9 hours straight and should have gone to work and oh god what have you done

Just finished it. I took my time and collected most of the logs and took in the scenery. While I think the game is an absolute masterpiece of presentation, and a ton of fun to play, I was super disappointed in the story. I'm really not a big fan of stories that wrap themselves up by invalidating most of their own content. I just thought it completely fell apart in the last third. You could interpret the story as never having happened at all, which is infuriating. Songbird, Comstock, Vox, the weird ghost mom thing (wtf, seriously), none of it winds up having any actual meaning; It's just Booker and his daughter, which would've been fine if the main character of the game wasn't really Columbia.

It just seemed random and inconsequential to me. It made the world I'd played through much less interesting.

I will say though, that the many worlds, constants and variables bit? Absolute, pure, world building genius. It reminded me a little of the end of Contact actually, if anyone remembers that movie.

It's a reboot, then. Practically nothing in those screenies remind me of Thief 1 or 2 (2 is the absolute pinnacle of the series IMHO), but more an evolution of Thief 3 heavily crossbred with Dishonored. I'm not seeing any hammers, pagans or keepers, and the story notes seem to be a retread of Thief 2 without the grand politics.

I can't help but feel a little wistful. This isn't "my" Thief; Stephen Russell is an old man, his voice is going, I will eat my hat if he voices Garrett in this one, if it's even Garrett at all. The original games had UI for sure but it didn't intrude on the world. I don't need "Thief-vision" or whatever, I want to skulk and listen at doors and peer through shadows. These guys even talking about combat as though it's a viable option makes me sad.

I'm sure it'll be wonderful (games typically are these days) but all I want to do right now is boot up Thief 2 again and run across the rooftops of Life of the party.

Wow dudes... I think you really made a big stumble here.

Typography in general is messy and tough to read, with some weird aliasing on almost every header or serif font you've used (I'm on Chrome). The entire "balance" of the site is off, with so much ornamental embellishment tons more eye travel is needed to even just find the stuff that is of any value; Of course this is a "training" thing where the more we use the site the more used to it we will be but first impressions were really low.

Gallery

Right now it's pretty unpleasant viewing. I have to say. Reminds me of the remake GameTrailers got, and I still can't get over how messy that site is today. I gather this is somehow built around mobile rendering, but on the desktop the experience is much worse.

To be clear, I'm in no way suggesting this information be hidden. I'm questioning the value of its prominent reporting by mainstream consumer-oriented press, and whether doing so indiscriminately, especially in an environment frequented by loud fanboys, is beneficial to the industry.

@bushpusherr: I don't? Hm.

I always thought of games as an even trade. I keep them alive, they give me things I love. If either side breaks their part of the bargain, it falls apart. I think the "hard core consumers" if you will, owe the industry a certain vote of confidence. It doesn't make sense to me to not buy a system and then be pissed it's not selling well, and then be pissed it's not getting better games, service or more exclusives. Games platforms are services, they are pretty much desperate for income to improve.

I think I look at platforms as different from the games that run on them. I don't owe a developer I've never heard of a damn thing, and I certainly don't owe a developer of poorly received games any clemency just to "give them a break". For games systems though, that's a little tricky. I think you'd have to be a pretty jaded duder to look at the Wii U and not think okay, there's some potential here. Fact of the matter is, nothing has really delivered on that potential yet, and there are system stability issues that hold it back. All these things are true, and good reasons to hold off on your purchase.

But I don't think simply trusting the herd is good enough a reason to not buy it yourself if you have the itch to pick up a unit. "I really want one, but nobody else does, that makes me feel uncomfortable!" That just strikes me as the games press short circuiting the natural order (stability, game quality, word of mouth) and instead simply saying that the thing doesn't sell well, QED. It doesn't inform anyone other than inject further doubt and insecurity. I'd prefer that doubt to come from the attributes of the system in question, not from some sort of idea derived from sales statistics.

I probably overthink this. Like everything else :-/

@bushpusherr: But you do see that makes you part of the problem too?

For the record, I'm one of those that held off on my Wii U purchase to see how it's going, and the press has not been particularly comforting. When I now read about how shitty sales are resulting in worse sales, it makes me wonder how complicit I am in that, being one of the, er, waiters.

@FierceDeity: Well that's concerning ;-(

@wemibelec90: Yeah it's difficult to rationalize any perspective on it really.. The games press exists to report on the industry, but the press also exists because the industry is healthy. It seems like there needs to be some sort of TLC between the two, or some "gentleman's agreement". Heck, I don't know. But it bugs me an awful lot these days.

I'm a multiplat guy anyway, I buy all the systems and all the games and I want everything to be healthy and nice, so consumers have lots of choice and developers have lots of work. "Picking on the new guy" seems like a Bad Thing.

So here’s a thing that’s been bothering me for a while.

PlayStation Vita sales struggling in Europe

Comparing Nintendo, Sony and Microsoft Black Friday Sales

Nintendo’s Wii U sales struggle

3DS sales struggle in recent weeks

My perception of this is probably somewhat skewed but I’ll talk about this anyway: I think for as long as I can remember, every system launch has been paired with a games press that is, it seems, real happy to be discussing hardware sales numbers. I cannot fathom why this information is of any value to consumers, and indeed if it isn’t actually detrimental.

The most recent pair of “ailing” products (they are not ailing) are the PlayStation Vita and the Wii U. System sales are one thing, but then we get into a lack of exclusives, or exclusives going multi-plat. I can’t help but think that any product fresh out of the gates will have a challenge ahead of it to build a user base, and that everyone involved in that product is taking a risk.

I think the games press is hurting the industry by reporting so gleefully on the failings of a platform.

It’s not even a particularly wide leap to make; If everybody says a system sells poorly or lacks value, then less people are going to invest in it. The relationship in terms of marketing is practically 1:1. It is, however, “marketing” over which the platform holder or their third parties hold little immediate agency. Building a user base is pretty tough business.

Don’t get me wrong. I think it’s perfectly laudable to report on the Wii U crashing, or Diablo 3′s connection problems and so forth. But reporting on those things are not directly counterproductive to solving those issues.

I’m torn. And maybe there just isn’t a good way around this.

I’m doing a lot of game development these days, and it takes a long, long time to finish something. I mean really finish. As in having something up to Nintendo scratch, and you just know it’s going to be fantastic for everyone who plays it. I’d even say you can’t realistically meet that goal unless the stars are perfect and you have some substantial savings. Then there’s the question about profitability.

Here’s my (possibly naive) business plan.

1. Within a reasonable budget, make a game that encapsulates the essence of what I want to create (realizing that there will always be more things I want to do with it)
2. Put it up for sale in a fun, stable state.
3. View user comments and reviews.
4. Spend income on updates to add content and fix any objective flaws.

This ties into another plan, which is to never do a title update simply for bug fixes. Every update should include a content update of some sort. This both to reward users for keeping up to date (with more than just bug fixes), but also to keep myself lean and mean (to myself).

If I got consistent press immediately after launch about how few features my game had, or how poorly it ran on device x, I’d likely have less sales, and less opportunity to rectify. The product would just die, and my reputation as a developer would be tarnished.

I guess I just believe a craftsman should be given the opportunity to redeem himself for his mistakes, and by reporting on ailing sales, I feel the games press is not affording the platform holders that opportunity. It looks like the games press meddling with fundamental platform marketing, and it stinks to see the apparently joyful way that information propagates through the media.

I think the press should at the very least be considerate of what they publish in terms of sales statistics, and consider the wider effects of such information elevated to such prominence. I’d expect something like Gamesindustry.biz to report on this stuff. I have no idea why Eurogamer or IGN believes the gaming consumer should give a fuck.