5 ms·

I'm not sure how insightful this is. It's largely predicated on his personal beliefs of what games are good and what you're looking for in a game. I think Pikmi

I'm not sure how insightful this is. It's largely predicated on his personal beliefs of what games are good and what you're looking for in a game. I think Pikmin is a great game. I'm not sure I would call it close to being the best RTS game, or even worth $60. If anything I would say some of the takeaway should be reversed: * Games are significantly cheaper than ever before * Games are generally longer and have more content than ever before. A year of multiplayer life is pretty good for $60. * Free to play games aren't successful as an adverse reaction to monetized non-free games. Free to play games are more monetized than most. * Old games are great. Go play them. But don't expect a fungible experience with new games. There is no classic game equivalent for Resident Evil 8. I would say, there isn't even something particularly equivalent for Hollow Knight, which is a direct evolution off of old school metroidvania. But definitely try to look past marketing. We can of course agree on that.

lapetitejort 5y ago
> Old games are great. Go play them. But don't expect a fungible experience with new games. There is no classic game equivalent for Resident Evil 8. Similarly, there is no modern equivalent to Katamari Damacy. Some games are just too perfect to be recreated.
- spywaregorilla 5y ago
  Potentially unpopular opinion, but I think a large part of Katamari Damacy's appeal was it's oddball aesthetic, with a feeling it was kind of intentionally shitty, but executed really well. I think this hasn't aged as well as it deserved because so many indie games ham up the "low quality" aspect of their game now. Whereas KD did it artistically, indie games do it as an excuse for not being better. And for keeping that company, I find KD hasn't aged well. Good theme song though.
  - swivelmaster 5y ago
    Indie games often do it because they can't afford to do more.
    - spywaregorilla 5y ago
      I don't buy that. You may not have the budget to hire a great writer with elaborate stories. You can, on your own, not constantly make 4th wall breaking allusions to being in a low quality game. You can also just step back and not have the dialogue at all. Bad writing is much much worse than no writing.
stevenwoo 5y ago
I worked in the industry a while back when those prices were set, and he does not even mention several factors 1.) games sold in stores required a concrete date for shelf space with an agreement with large retailers for shelf placement and kiosks, better cost the publisher more concessions IIRC, the game publisher sold the game for half the retail price to retailers so they were making say $30 out of the $60, ballpark estimates of sales were used to set budgets and almost everyone tried to time release for optimum sales period of Christmas shopping, setting the date - often years in advance, so that's why the time crunch problem was/is an issue, most games sold an extremely high percentage within a month of release often > 90% at least at full retail price (I can't remember if the publisher had a penalty for those that didn't sell after a while) 2.) many console games required a contracted number of actual physical media burned at a certain date so the publisher had to predict sales, a popular console might have limited timeslots for production to sell to game publishers and overshooting the mark on physical media is a loss and undershooting means lost sales at retail price so this makes console more high stakes than PC games in a way for publisher (Nintendo being console maker and publisher changes this somewhat for them alone), also the surcharge the console makers charged publishers was $10 per physical media produced in PS3/360 days, this had not changed from Game Boy days when we looked into making a new cartridge game when those games sold for $30-$40. Obviously the situation has changed and I don't know what the numbers are now, and some of these are alleviated/changed by the availability of digital only versions of games.

lapetitejort 5y ago

> Old games are great. Go play them. But don't expect a fungible experience with new games. There is no classic game equivalent for Resident Evil 8. Similarly, there is no modern equivalent to Katamari Damacy. Some games are just too perfect to be recreated.

spywaregorilla 5y ago
Potentially unpopular opinion, but I think a large part of Katamari Damacy's appeal was it's oddball aesthetic, with a feeling it was kind of intentionally shitty, but executed really well. I think this hasn't aged as well as it deserved because so many indie games ham up the "low quality" aspect of their game now. Whereas KD did it artistically, indie games do it as an excuse for not being better. And for keeping that company, I find KD hasn't aged well. Good theme song though.
- swivelmaster 5y ago
  Indie games often do it because they can't afford to do more.
  - spywaregorilla 5y ago
    I don't buy that. You may not have the budget to hire a great writer with elaborate stories. You can, on your own, not constantly make 4th wall breaking allusions to being in a low quality game. You can also just step back and not have the dialogue at all. Bad writing is much much worse than no writing.

stevenwoo 5y ago

I worked in the industry a while back when those prices were set, and he does not even mention several factors 1.) games sold in stores required a concrete date for shelf space with an agreement with large retailers for shelf placement and kiosks, better cost the publisher more concessions IIRC, the game publisher sold the game for half the retail price to retailers so they were making say $30 out of the $60, ballpark estimates of sales were used to set budgets and almost everyone tried to time release for optimum sales period of Christmas shopping, setting the date - often years in advance, so that's why the time crunch problem was/is an issue, most games sold an extremely high percentage within a month of release often > 90% at least at full retail price (I can't remember if the publisher had a penalty for those that didn't sell after a while) 2.) many console games required a contracted number of actual physical media burned at a certain date so the publisher had to predict sales, a popular console might have limited timeslots for production to sell to game publishers and overshooting the mark on physical media is a loss and undershooting means lost sales at retail price so this makes console more high stakes than PC games in a way for publisher (Nintendo being console maker and publisher changes this somewhat for them alone), also the surcharge the console makers charged publishers was $10 per physical media produced in PS3/360 days, this had not changed from Game Boy days when we looked into making a new cartridge game when those games sold for $30-$40. Obviously the situation has changed and I don't know what the numbers are now, and some of these are alleviated/changed by the availability of digital only versions of games.