JohnEpler wrote..
And why wouldn't we want to tell some of those folks who have only ever played those sorts of games that 'hey, here are some aspects of the game similar to what you're used to.' Just because you like to unwind with a competitive shooter, that doesn't mean you can't appreciate the finer points of a story-based RPG. And if we have something in common that we can use as an 'in' to get you to try something you may not normally try, all the better.
Agreed, yet my concern anyway is that with too many "RPGs" released today, they're simply adopting more aspects and elements of shooters or other genres in an effort to bring in a larger audience. And thats fine for some games. But after a while it seems like RPGs just end up melding into any type of game, until you get to the point where people make the claim that Madden is an RPG.
What worries me with gaming in general is how many AAA games with massive budgets seem completely risk averse to doing anything that would risk having the game labeled as "niche." For instance, you've got Dead Space 2, which while a nice game, (IMO) isn't anything too terribly different than Dead Space 1, except maybe adding in some more action oriented QTE's. Again, not a bad game, but its a rather safe game. Cut to something like Amnesia, which is a vastly different take on a horror game.
And yet you have this quote from DS2's creative director about Amnesia from
this interview:I think the thing about Amnesia for me, though, is it's definitely a niche game. I can't imagine that there are a lot of people in the mainstream that would really be into a game like that.
And of course I don't know much about sales or anything like that, but it struck me as a really great game that I think a very small number of players might enjoy. We found that when doing market research on Dead Space, when we look at other survival horror games, stuff from Japan like Fatal Frame and the like, there's a really, really rabid fanbase for those games, but they actually don't sell very well at all.
Of course, we'd like to make games that sell a lot. Everybody does. It was pretty hard to convince people to give us the money to make a game when you're talking about sales in the hundreds of thousands, you know.
Now Amnesia, a PC only game with no retail release, made by 5 guys, has
sold about 200,000 copies as of early January. Is that as good as DS2? No, but I'd say Amnesia is a billion times the game DS2 is. So my issue is you have the DS2 creative director seemingly avoiding a genuinely scary experience because he thinks that won't sell in the millions.
Bringing it back to DA2 and RPGs though, it boils down to: If no AAA developer bothers trying anything considered "niche" and just plays it safe, how do they know the "niche" product wouldn't sell? If every game ends up being some amalgum of features lifted from the most popular other AAA games, doesn't that get boring?
Thats why I enjoyed DAO so much, was that it felt new to me since there were no party based tactical RPGs out on the market given AAA treatment in such a long time. And with DA2, it seems some of the more "classical," "traditional," or features deemed "niche" from Origins seem to be gone in favor of things that look like they're desperately trying to draw in the more "mainstream" CoD or ME or action oriented crowd.
It just pains me when I see developers moaning about high budgets for games and how they need to sell several million to be successful. Why not try some more mid range game? Not some dinky facebook game, but have BioWare make some more old school iso view BG style RPGs, that sacrifice some of the mainstream bells and whistles and VO- but present an experience that while maybe viewed as "niche" wouldn't need to sell a billion copies to break even.
Its like every game made by a big developer needs to be the equivalent of some summer blockbuster movie and as a result, they end up playing it safe and doing whatever it was the other big selling game did. I think in trying to reach out for some mythical "mainstream" audience, devs might be leaving behind other groups of gamers whose money is just as viable as Mr. Call of Duty or World of Warcraft. Sometimes it would seem best to just make a damn good game for one audience instead of spreading it too thin in some attempt to capture everyone and satisfying no one.
/ End Rant:wizard:
Modifié par Brockololly, 09 février 2011 - 12:34 .
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but anyway) I rarely ran into people running around being idiots. And whenever you did, usually you quickly saw annoying player x getting booted by the server admin. If they keep coming back you see them get banned by the admin. 
