The_A_Drain

Real-Playing Game

Hilariously awful mixture of Stay Alive and Battle Royale 'starring' (for about 15 minutes) Rutger Hauer. Seriously, 10 out of fucking 10, this is a great movie to watch with friends and take the piss out of.

Holy shitsnacks. I would totally buy it a second time if this is true.

To be honest, given the house-of-cards of a database they must be working with by this point in the franchise, I'm surprised they are still committed to maintaining such a huge number of pokemon. They might be in charge of one of the biggest franchises of all-time, but that doesn't necessarily mean their product budgets for each game are any different to any normal game production. Usually developers barely see any of the money their own games bring in, that's how publishing works.

But even if they did, having even a small set of animations, sounds and special effects for almost 500 pokemon and all the associated features and gameplay and having them be as glitch-free and solidly built as they are? As a software developer, I marvel at that. It's an incredible achievement even if it might seem like a simple, easy to produce game on the surface. The sheer scope of the pokemon roster is horrifying.

I'm also not sure the idea of having something unique for each new generation is 'an excuse'. Developers are free to pick and choose what they think does and doesn't work and what will/won't be a good fit for their next game. As much as people are free to voice their opinion about whether they agree or not.

This is a particularly strange one coming from anybody championing the 'games are art' banner.

Art is not always pleasant, enjoyable or non-challenging. Very often it seeks to evoke a reaction or response which can run the gamut from pleasant to disgusting, entertaining to frustrating or maddening, art doesn't exist solely to please.

There is some leeway I believe when you factor in that people pay for these games, and that $60 is a lot of money to spend on something you might not enjoy. But I find the dissonance present in people who shout 'games ARE art!' and then in the same breath will say things like 'games should stay out of politics/religion/social/gender issues' or insist that they should be primarily focused on 'fun' at all times to be pretty baffling.

That said, I don't blame someone for walking away from a game they aren't enjoying (I did exactly that with Evil Within) but I think we gotta sit down and think about whether or not games really are art, at least the ones that are (if they are indeed art) also massive consumer products, something which while not impossible to combine, are kinda at odds with each other by default. Games like Bioshock, games like Assassin's Creed. It's very easy to say that they must be art because they are beautifully crafted and rendered worlds with highly realistic animations and engrossing storylines. But does that make them art? Is that enough to make them art? I don't know, and I don't have an answer. But I think it's something we would all benefit from thinking about.

@groverat: Thanks, just kinda wanted to ramble a bit and this seemed like the place to do it.

It's really rare to see interesting discussion like this happen online, so I'm really hoping more people can weigh in and give their own insights. In my teens and early 20's I tried my best not to be a dick, but I also never really tried to understand any of these issues, I was very much "I think both sides should shut up", now I'm much more interested in getting involved and trying to understand different viewpoints. But you don't often get the chance to talk about them without immediately being pigeonholed based on the first words that come out of your mouth, which I think is a real shame when there's such complexity involved, and quite daunting when there's such a potentially vitriolic reaction usually attached nowadays.

Dat soundtrack.

Otherwise *shrug* I didn't get the appeal in 2001 and I don't really get it now. I mean, they are very well-made first-person shooters (Library levels aside) and I can see why they helped propel the console FPS genre into the limelight given what else was around and (Goldeneye and a few others being exceptions) how crappy the genre generally was up to that point on consoles really helped it gain traction.

But I just never thought they were that special myself, more power to the fans though.

edit: Also, Master Chief is TOTALLY just Doom Guy with his helmet on. (/joke)

@zevvion: My problem isn't so much that it's dated, I would love dated, there's a lot I think we can re-learn from older games that have been lost in modern game design philosophy. Just that I feel Evil Within combines some elements I dislike from modern games with some elements I wasn't super fond of from around 2001. In my mind, it's a substandard version of Resident Evil 4, a game which although I loved, felt killed the survival horror genre dead (I consider most modern horror games to be either action or puzzle, but that's another discussion I could literally write tens of thousands of words on).

The very short of the long, is I got pissed off with it giving me no ammo and then locking me in a room until I'd killed everything. That is an absolute tension-killer and such a brain-dead approach to survival-horror. Not giving me enough ammo to kill my opponents loses it's effect if you don't give me the choice to attempt to avoid them. I'm not tense if I have to abuse the AI and punch everything to death, I'm just annoyed.

But yeah I'm really tempted by Lords of the Fallen also, and it's payday tomorrow so... Hrrmmm.

That game developers make tons of money. Unless you're in a very select group of people, mostly incredibly skilled, hugely experienced programmers and audio engineers (both of whom make about the same, which is an avg 20 grand more than artists/animators) or you're in marketing/management, then you make jack shit.

That is, you make a decent wage. But comparing the hours you have to put in and the wage versus a similar job in another industry (this is most evident imo in programming, where you can do literally 1/3rd of the work for almost double the wage at some levels of experience) it's not a good place to be. You also have horrendously bad job security (IE unless you're a lead, basically none, quite often especially for artists, you're on 3-month rolling contracts)

It's even more horrific and implosion-prone for indies.

Another one is that people who play mobile phone games or whatever are somehow inferior to more dedicated enthusiasts. It's like, who cares? There's plenty of games for everyone to enjoy, don't look down on people for which games they enjoy, use your differing tastes as a way of starting conversation, not stopping it.

I guess another much more specific one is that fighting game players are generally shitheads. Something I find to be incredibly unfair. They are boisterous and loud, sure, but for overall (and there ARE significant exceptions, unfortunately) the fighting game community (at least offline) has been probably the single most welcoming thing I've ever been a part of, there is a clear separation between what's acceptable and what's not, and the banter that takes place usually is just a product of excitement and the winner-takes-all culture. Once that has subsided after a heated match, there's nobody I want to go for a drink with more than FGC people, they know how to have a laugh and not take things too seriously, but then it hits the fan all the ones I've interacted with know where the line is and when to be a human being. Something I honestly can't say I've experienced from other gaming communities, most notably PC/LAN crowd, I've felt incredibly unwelcomed at PC-focused events. I'll be the first to admit it does have a problem with 'macho' image however, and that I speak with only experience for the English and European communities.

@zevvion: I tried to play Dark Souls 2 on release day, but the first 45 mins or so put me off a bit, was very different in tone to what I was used to from the series, even though the changes were relatively minor. So I sort of 'NOPED' and have been meaning to give it a second chance ever since. For context, I'm one of those people who thought Demon's Souls was the best in the series and that Dark Souls while fantastic, was not as good.

Debating giving Lords of the Fallen a go.

I used to pvp in Dark Souls, but I've never been a fan of those games co-op, I much prefer them as solo experiences. Really hope you enjoy Evil Within because I couldn't.

I lost a bit of weight recently (just over a stone) so I'm juuuuust about small enough to pull off Poirot without being way too big for even him. Yeah, I'm still pretty big, oh well. I get to be my favorite Belgian detective for the weekend :D also the relatively low-effort version isn't going to be too hard to put together between payday (tomorrow) and friday. All I need to source is a bowler hat (yeah he wears a Homburg but like I said, low budget and low effort), a dinner shirt and bow-tie, and a couple of fake moustaches to trim down. The rest I can cobble together from my graduation suit. Sorted.