Since when did this topic stop being about video games (or digital games if you prefer the term) and started being about games. If we talk about games Scott is right, but if we talk about video games Scott is wrong (or only partially right.)
How many people Played the demo version of doom, or commander keen, or any of those without ever buying the real game?
Most of the computer games I played as a kid were only Shareware versions of games and I didn't even realize it before later.
Lesson Learned: If Scott Rubin likes the game, thenit's a good fucking game.
I'll give him that. Snooty, condescending cockbags are a dime a dozen on the internets, but most of them don't have as high and well-considered standards as Scott.
Plus, because I'm nice, it's worth noting that Scott seems like a pretty cool dude when he's not being a cockbag about games.
Lesson Learned: If Scott Rubin likes the game, thenit's a good fucking game.
I'll give him that. Snooty, condescending cockbags are a dime a dozen on the internets, but most of them don't have as high and well-considered standards as Scott.
Plus, because I'm nice, it's worth noting that Scott seems like a pretty cool dude when he's not being a cockbag about games.
Seconded. If I'm looking for a game that I know I can sink many hours of play and contemplation into, I follow the advice of Scott. (Which is why I have brand-new copies of Puerto Rico and Diplomacy sitting next to me) If I want a game that I can play with my friends while having a few drinks and cracking jokes, I listen to Dave and Joel.
Ultimately, does it really matter whether Scott likes the games or not? If you like a game, play it. If someone doesn' like the game, fuck them. Play what you want to play if you find it to be fun. That being said, WoW is a shitty game and if it is your entire life, then you are a sad, strange little man and you have my pity.
Ultimately, does it really matter whether Scott likes the games or not? If you like a game, play it. If someone doesn' like the game, fuck them. Play what you want to play if you find it to be fun. That being said, WoW is a shitty game and if it is your entire life, then you are a sad, strange little man and you have my pity.
This is true. If i'm enjoying myself, fuck your shit. Scott's opinion becomes relevant when I'm looking for a new game and don't want to spend my hard-earned monies and limited time on poop, or poop painted a different color.
This is true. If i'm enjoying myself, fuck your shit. Scott's opinion becomes relevant when I'm looking for a new game and don't want to spend my hard-earned monies and limited time on poop, or poop painted a different color.
The problem with that statement is that Scott thinks that almost every game that is released now is poop. My suggestion is to just find some people online (whether they are forumites, game "journalists", podcasters, or whatever) who seem to have a relatively similar taste in games and see what they say about whatever game you are interested in buying/playing.
Since I have a horrible habit of jumping from thing to thing before finishing any of them, I've been playing Assassin's Creed 2 and I also just started Kirby's Epic Yarn today. That is on top of the six other games I have highlighted as being in progress.
The problem with that statement is that Scott thinks that almost every game that is released now is poop. My suggestion is to just find some people online (whether they are forumites, game "journalists", podcasters, or whatever) who seem to have a relatively similar taste in games and see what they say about whatever game you are interested in buying/playing.
Don't you worry. I have my network of sources, and I take their individual tastes into consideration when I listen to their suggestions. I treat Scott's opinion like a snooty wine critic. If i'm looking for something with depth and complexity, that I can savor, analyze, and discover the more I experience it, I go to him. I treat Dave and Joel's advice like the suggestion of a friend while we are on the way to the liquor store. I can always trust them to find me something entertaining that I don't necessarily have to remember in the morning.
I'll take the advice of Scott, Yahtzee, and D&J;, but I treat their opinions very differently.
The problem with that statement is that Scott thinks that almost every game that is released now is poop. My suggestion is to just find some people online (whether they are forumites, game "journalists", podcasters, or whatever) who seem to have a relatively similar taste in games and see what they say about whatever game you are interested in buying/playing.
Ah, Scott's Crippling fear of change, and the hours upon hours of time he invested into these games and skills becoming useless, combining with his ego that it must be the game's fault, and not his - May you produce many more entertaining whinges and "arguments" about any game that's made post 2000 and how they all suck, with a few notable exceptions.
I treat Scott's opinion like a snooty wine critic.
Could only handle ten minutes. So far all that's happened is two doors have opened without me doing anything to them, and I heard footsteps of....something. This is ten minutes in. I'm scared shitless. I had to stop playing. Won't turn the thing on again while it's dark out. Jesus fucking Christ is the game scary. Seriously.
Yeah, that's about how far I got in the demo. I even made a point to play during the day, with all the lights on, sound low, and with the game in a window. I don't think that game is for me.
Yet again, Scott has passed judgement on a game of which he has only played the demo.
First of all, I didn't judge the game. I was judging the players. Who are sissies. I turned of all the lights and tried to make this game scary, but it wasn't. I will give it credit though. It didn't resort to jumping out and going "boo" like the Eternal Darkness bathtub. Which, by the way, happens to be surprise, not fear. Surprise and fear are two different things, though they are both key parts of the Spanish Inquisition's arsenal.
I think the reason the game wasn't scary is because it comes on too strong right from the get go. Almost immediately you're getting wobbly camera, changing lights, noises from unseen places, etc. You have to build up to it. If you walk into a house and the blood is coming out of the walls as soon as you open the door, that's just comedic, not horrifying. You have to start out slightly eerie and mysterious and build up to the blood coming out of the walls.
Also, I was expecting the game not to have any actual game whatsover. I figured it would be an fps walk-through a storybook kind of situation. Yet, there was actual puzzle solving and fps platforming going on. But now that I think about it, I think it would actually be better if it didn't have any game at all. When I was doing the fps platforming, it completely took me out of any mood of horror.
I think the reason the game wasn't scary is because it comes on too strong right from the get go. Almost immediately you're getting wobbly camera, changing lights, noises from unseen places, etc. You have to build up to it. If you walk into a house and the blood is coming out of the walls as soon as you open the door, that's just comedic, not horrifying. You have to start out slightly eerie and mysterious and build up to the blood coming out of the walls.
I agree - If you're jumping right into the scares, they have less impact, because you're "scared" from the get go. "Scared" is your baseline - if you have a baseline of merely eerie or slightly creepy, then when it ramps up the scares, it has much more impact.
Not a commentary on the game itself, just on general game/story/whatever design.
I think the reason the game wasn't scary is because it comes on too strong right from the get go. Almost immediately you're getting wobbly camera, changing lights, noises from unseen places, etc. You have to build up to it. If you walk into a house and the blood is coming out of the walls as soon as you open the door, that's just comedic, not horrifying. You have to start out slightly eerie and mysterious and build up to the blood coming out of the walls.
I hate to say it, but that's because you played the demo. :P The whole thing is a condensed version of the first hour and half or so of the full game.
I hate to say it, but that's because you played the demo. :P The whole thing is a condensed version of the first hour and half or so of the full game.
Bitches gotta get better at making demos boss.
Since this has been an issue lately, I think I have to address it more completely.
There are a zillion video games out there, not counting other media, not counting other ways to spend my limited time on earth. Some video games have demos. Those demos are meant to give the player an idea of what the full game is like, so they can make a purchasing decision. The creators want to make the demo as tantalizing as possible, so the player will buy the full version. However, they want the demo to be limited, so the player still has a need to purchase the full version.
At PAX West '09 Alex went to a panel where many statistics were presented, and he relayed to me these facts. First, games with trailers and no demos sell much better than games with demos and no trailer, or games with demos and trailers. The reason is most likely that once players play a demo they either realize they don't like the game, or they get a complete enough experience that they don't need to get the full game. Whereas if a game has no demo, some people will buy it who otherwise would have played a demo and never purchased it. In short, it's a bad idea to have a demo if you are a game developer/publisher.
That being said, as a gamer I love me some free demos, for obvious reasons.
Now, it is true that many demos do not accurately represent the experience of the full version of the game. There are demos that are great for games that suck, and vice versa. There are demos that are so extremely limited that you can learn almost nothing from them. There are also demos that are so vast, you really don't need the full version of the game at all. IIRC, the demo of Doom 1 is the complete first episode of the game. That was 33% of the game as the fourth episode didn't come out until Ultimate Doom. Even then, it was still 25% of the game.
Anyway, you are complaining that I am judging games based on the demo. Well, I grant you that it is possible that I could make a wrong call because of a shitty demo for an amazing game. However, even the worst demo will expose the player to the core mechanics of a game. The demo for SSF2THD on the XBox360 only lets you play as Ryu/Ken in one stage. That's extremely limiting. However, all the base mechanics of Street Fighter are in there. It has everything you need to know what kind of game you are about to buy.
Think about any games you've played recently. Now take an extremely small part of one of those games. Imagine just one level of Super Meat Boy. Or imagine just one lap around a track in Mario Kart. Or perhaps a handful of turns in Civ V. One round of Counter-Strike. Even with that extremely limited demo, you learn everything you need to know about the game. A video game is not a book or a movie where you need to experience the entire work to understand it. You can play a very small sample of a game and understand its mechanics completely. And from that, you can pass a judgement.
Now, it is not unheard of for a game demo to not actually resemble the real game in any way shape or form. Imagine a demo of Actraiser that did not include the town portion of the game. Or imagine a demo of Earthbound that consisted of just one turn-based combat. A demo can leave so much out that you really don't know what the game is about because the demo was too extremely limited. In these cases, I will knowingly do the unfair thing and judge the game by the demo anyway.
The publisher/developer put that demo out there intentionally. They are saying that that is a sample of their game. If they are lying, that's not my problem. That demo is what I have to go by. If I don't like it, I'm certainly not going to pay for their game, nor am I going to invest any time into that game. I have thousands of other games to play. If a demo sucks, that's pretty much game over right there. Will I misjudge a game now and then? Probably, but it's no loss. I have a zillion other great games to play, missing a few will not hurt.
Most importantly, it's not like I'm those people who get paid to review games who only played one level and then wrote a review for a magazine. I'm just some guy on the Internet, and I also happen to be fully disclosing that I played only the demo. That's more than you'll get from most so-called video game journalists.
If you don't like that I pass judgement on a demo, and you think my judgement of the full version will be different, then blame the demo, not me. Or better yet, don't have a demo at all.
Lately the way gaming is going, I view whatever precursor game I get super cheap in a steam sale the demo, if the game is really good then I'll buy it full retail when it comes out. That's how bioware started to get my money. I bought on the cheap Mass effect one, loved it. So I bought Mass effect 2 day one. Just make a good first game and give it away with a compelling reason to play the second one :-p
Fable III is more Fable, which I like. They aren't the best games ever, but they're fun.
That being said, I'm going to stop playing all of my other new games for a while and finish LittleBigPlanet. I didn't realise that the sequel is coming out next month.
That's nothing I didn't already know or assume, Scott. I just wanted say that Mr. Macross and Sail aren't total pussies, because the full game is much better paced than the demo. The devs are quite good at slowly building tension.
Comments
Plus, because I'm nice, it's worth noting that Scott seems like a pretty cool dude when he's not being a cockbag about games.
I'll take the advice of Scott, Yahtzee, and D&J;, but I treat their opinions very differently.
Could only handle ten minutes. So far all that's happened is two doors have opened without me doing anything to them, and I heard footsteps of....something.
This is ten minutes in.
I'm scared shitless.
I had to stop playing.
Won't turn the thing on again while it's dark out.
Jesus fucking Christ is the game scary.
Seriously.
EDIT: Beat the demo. You are babies.
I think the reason the game wasn't scary is because it comes on too strong right from the get go. Almost immediately you're getting wobbly camera, changing lights, noises from unseen places, etc. You have to build up to it. If you walk into a house and the blood is coming out of the walls as soon as you open the door, that's just comedic, not horrifying. You have to start out slightly eerie and mysterious and build up to the blood coming out of the walls.
Also, I was expecting the game not to have any actual game whatsover. I figured it would be an fps walk-through a storybook kind of situation. Yet, there was actual puzzle solving and fps platforming going on. But now that I think about it, I think it would actually be better if it didn't have any game at all. When I was doing the fps platforming, it completely took me out of any mood of horror.
Not a commentary on the game itself, just on general game/story/whatever design.
There are a zillion video games out there, not counting other media, not counting other ways to spend my limited time on earth. Some video games have demos. Those demos are meant to give the player an idea of what the full game is like, so they can make a purchasing decision. The creators want to make the demo as tantalizing as possible, so the player will buy the full version. However, they want the demo to be limited, so the player still has a need to purchase the full version.
At PAX West '09 Alex went to a panel where many statistics were presented, and he relayed to me these facts. First, games with trailers and no demos sell much better than games with demos and no trailer, or games with demos and trailers. The reason is most likely that once players play a demo they either realize they don't like the game, or they get a complete enough experience that they don't need to get the full game. Whereas if a game has no demo, some people will buy it who otherwise would have played a demo and never purchased it. In short, it's a bad idea to have a demo if you are a game developer/publisher.
That being said, as a gamer I love me some free demos, for obvious reasons.
Now, it is true that many demos do not accurately represent the experience of the full version of the game. There are demos that are great for games that suck, and vice versa. There are demos that are so extremely limited that you can learn almost nothing from them. There are also demos that are so vast, you really don't need the full version of the game at all. IIRC, the demo of Doom 1 is the complete first episode of the game. That was 33% of the game as the fourth episode didn't come out until Ultimate Doom. Even then, it was still 25% of the game.
Anyway, you are complaining that I am judging games based on the demo. Well, I grant you that it is possible that I could make a wrong call because of a shitty demo for an amazing game. However, even the worst demo will expose the player to the core mechanics of a game. The demo for SSF2THD on the XBox360 only lets you play as Ryu/Ken in one stage. That's extremely limiting. However, all the base mechanics of Street Fighter are in there. It has everything you need to know what kind of game you are about to buy.
Think about any games you've played recently. Now take an extremely small part of one of those games. Imagine just one level of Super Meat Boy. Or imagine just one lap around a track in Mario Kart. Or perhaps a handful of turns in Civ V. One round of Counter-Strike. Even with that extremely limited demo, you learn everything you need to know about the game. A video game is not a book or a movie where you need to experience the entire work to understand it. You can play a very small sample of a game and understand its mechanics completely. And from that, you can pass a judgement.
Now, it is not unheard of for a game demo to not actually resemble the real game in any way shape or form. Imagine a demo of Actraiser that did not include the town portion of the game. Or imagine a demo of Earthbound that consisted of just one turn-based combat. A demo can leave so much out that you really don't know what the game is about because the demo was too extremely limited. In these cases, I will knowingly do the unfair thing and judge the game by the demo anyway.
The publisher/developer put that demo out there intentionally. They are saying that that is a sample of their game. If they are lying, that's not my problem. That demo is what I have to go by. If I don't like it, I'm certainly not going to pay for their game, nor am I going to invest any time into that game. I have thousands of other games to play. If a demo sucks, that's pretty much game over right there. Will I misjudge a game now and then? Probably, but it's no loss. I have a zillion other great games to play, missing a few will not hurt.
Most importantly, it's not like I'm those people who get paid to review games who only played one level and then wrote a review for a magazine. I'm just some guy on the Internet, and I also happen to be fully disclosing that I played only the demo. That's more than you'll get from most so-called video game journalists.
If you don't like that I pass judgement on a demo, and you think my judgement of the full version will be different, then blame the demo, not me. Or better yet, don't have a demo at all.
That being said, I'm going to stop playing all of my other new games for a while and finish LittleBigPlanet. I didn't realise that the sequel is coming out next month.
_________
One Tree Hill seasons 1 to 7 DVDso the discussion is changed??
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One Tree Hill seasons 1 to 7 DVDso the discussion is changed??
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One Tree Hill seasons 1 to 7 DVD
edit: Oh, a spam bot.