9 ms·

Donating my Xbox

228 points by ecaradec 14y ago

mrjava 14y ago
Great post and good luck with the new games!
lolwutreddit 14y ago
tl;dr
- mbel 14y ago
  It is quite well written and takes 2-3 minutes to read, if you find this piece too long, why are you browsing hacker news in the first place? Seriously, I'm not sarcastic, I'm curious. Most of articles linked here seem to be longer.
emiliobumachar 14y ago
Rule #1 of blogging: if you mention your company or service, it should be a link. I don't have hard data, but I think the need for googling "spry fox" (or guessing the url, spryfox.com) lowers the number of people who go on to the OP's site by a full order of magnitude. Good post otherwise.
- Lerc 14y ago
  It may just be me but I got the feeling that he wasn't posting this in order to draw traffic.
- muyuu 14y ago
  It could be that this wasn't just a marketing effort. Ever thought about that? like, speaking your mind without looking for an immediate reward.
- QuixoticChris 14y ago
  It adds credibility and class to the post though. It keeps the attention on the post's content, and feels less like a random plug.
  - visakanv 14y ago
    Eventually, people will develop strong immunities to random plugs, and all marketing will have to be this way- subtle, genuine, real. Can't wait.
    - unalone 14y ago
      This is assuming that this post is primarily marketing rather than a guy who is emotionally invested in both game design and his past getting something off of his chest. Sure, it acts as self-promotion, but it's cynical to assume that everything that promotes anything was created first and foremost to sell stuff.
- Morcane 14y ago
  lol you want an 'let me Google that' achievement?
- werid 14y ago
  just what every g+ post needs. a signature with all the information you've entered into your profile!
BlokkiesJoubert 14y ago
As usual, it is per definition very bad for men (white men) to have something - a club, a community - of their own.
- Karunamon 14y ago
  If that's what you're getting from this article, you either have very strange ways of reading the same text I did, or you are a fool. The entire point of this rant was that the author did not feel welcome in this "club, community" and didn't like what it entails. I can sympathize with that somewhat, and I bet you can too.
  - walshemj 14y ago
    well the op seems to like the Kawaii elements but some of the more intense Kawaii stuff can verge on creepy.
iMark 14y ago
I'm not a games developer, but I can relate to what Daniel wrote about game forms, after playing Bioshock Infinite. I love the game, but I did so mostly for elements of the design and story, rather than the game play. That it was an FPS connecting the story rather than a puzzle game, for example, was almost incidental to my enjoyment of it, and given the story, I think a series of Myst-style puzzles would have been a better fit. Wouldn't have sold nearly as well, of course, and there's the rub.
- kenshi 14y ago
  The reason I am not going to buy Bioshock Infinite is precisely because it seems like a pretty mediocre FPS, married to an interesting narrative and/or exploration game. Don't get me wrong, I love FPS shooters. So when I want to play one, I want it to be good. I also enjoy exploration games, and from what I have seen of Bioshock Infinite (I watched the ending and playthroughs on Youtube), it seems like it would have made for a great Myst style game. If anything the gameplay looks like the weakest part of Bioshock Infinite. I actually thing Irrational missed a big opportunity by making the game a FPS. Wasn't Myst a big commercial success back in the day? Wouldn't they have been able to appeal to a wider audience if they had tied the narrative to a something other than a FPS?
  - baby 14y ago
    This is exactly why I'm not in a rush to play this game. I will at some point try it but the first Bioshock lacked so much feeling and the gunfights were so boring that I'm really not into this new episode. I'm still glad that they use a First-Person perspective because I strongly believe that it's the best way to get immersed in a game.
  - Gigablah 14y ago
    Eh, there's a history behind the franchise. It's not like Irrational started out with a story and turned it into an FPS. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/System_Shock_2 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/System_Shock_2
  - msabalau 14y ago
muyuu 14y ago
This is so glorious I almost want to undelete my Google profile to give my first +1 that never happened. Almost. Still, great post with which I sympathise greatly.
baby 14y ago
> Strategy over button mashing! That made me think of QTE. We never needed those things, but still they gave it to us. And keeps giving it to us. It's lazy gameplay, it's a "I'm a developer, I have a cutscene and I'm too bored to integrate real gameplay into it".
- lloeki 14y ago
  As always there's balance to be had: done right it gives a sense of urgency and involvement in what would otherwise be another "lean back and watch things happen" cutscene, whereas done wrong it annoyingly interrupts the flow at best. Personal experience: God of War QTEs feel entirely disconnected and over the top, whereas (Square's) Tomb Raider QTEs help in breaking the fourth wall and draws me into the scene.
  - joosters 14y ago
    Zero Punctuation's Tomb Raider review would disagree; not just the QTEs but the increasingly common scenes where 'you have control' but if you don't immediately head in the right direction you'll die. It's not just Tomb Raider, Uncharted is also repeatedly guilty of this. http://www.escapistmagazine.com/videos/view/zero-punctuation/7025-Tomb-Raider http://www.escapistmagazine.com/videos/view/zero-punctuation...
  - baby 14y ago
    I was thinking of Tomb Raider when I say it was lazy gameplay.
- spacemanaki 14y ago
  Agree with lloeki to some extent, but with a different game in mind: the Walking Dead. All of the action sequences are done with QTEs, but they are sprinkled through the game and are pretty varied in style. I think in the context of an otherwise slow-paced adventure game it works pretty well.
- Nick_C 14y ago
  My particular pet peeve is not being able to replay a cutscene. "Wait, what did he say, I couldn't hear it." Or the phone rang and I got distracted. And it turns out to be an important plot detail that I missed. Aargh.
realo 14y ago
IMHO his article was a good read. I even fell for the Spry Fox thing and actually visited his website. Judging by the colorful first page of the site, his games seem cool and fun... Want to see them... I click PLAY, with a Sunday morning expectation of something interesting coming up. BLAM! A f*ing Facebook login screen. I am not a Facebook user. Never will be. Too bad. I look again at his web page with a sense of loss. _His_ loss of my attention. Back to my Sunday morning coffee, on to the next article in HN.
- andrewcooke 14y ago
  I was similarly disappointed, but dug out an android device and installed something town for free. it was quite interesting - based on the mechanic where changing one square in a grid affects the state of neighbours.
  - potkor 14y ago
    Triple Town. It's great though it's freemium (150 turns/day limit).
- bajsejohannes 14y ago
  One of the games do not require login: Leap Day. http://leapdaygame.com http://leapdaygame.com (Disclaimer: I worked on that game)
  - logic 14y ago
    A black screen that says nothing but "Unity Web Player Install Now!" might as well be a facebook login screen to me, I'm afraid.
- vitesse 14y ago
  You can play Panda Poet anonymously or with a google account. Supports almost any html5-ish browser with no plugins. I am the dev. http://game.pandapoet.com/ http://game.pandapoet.com/
unalone 14y ago
When I was a kid I hated the Xbox, hated Halo, and hated how it seemed to create a new model for playing games. It was released when I was in middle school, and I remember there being a sudden and abrupt shift in what kind of gaming mentality there was. Prior to the Xbox, console games were largely focused on lush, whimsical landscapes with mechanics that required some puzzling to figure out. At least, the games that kids played, anyway; I know Unreal Tournament and Doom and Quake were big, but looking back I think those games all had a whimsy to them as well. The arsenal in Unreal is way sillier than anything Halo's ever had to offer (even Halo's energy sword seems kind of rote). And the major titles on the N64 and Playstation and Dreamcast were titles like Mario and Sonic and Crash Bandicoot – colorful worlds, puzzles often based on platforming. Developers like Nintendo and Rare had a knack for creating controls and visuals that seem to reward you for getting into them, so that even Rare's Goldeneye 007 felt like an utterly silly game. (Proximity mine in the toilet!) When Halo came out, it was immediately apparent that this was Microsoft's grand new vision of gaming – "realistic" graphics, self-seriousness, achievements, and an ugly competitive edge. My memories of Halo are almost all multiplayer, obviously: generally, six kids sitting by a machine, two of them unhappy because they sucked and consequently were cycled out every other game, meaning they didn't get practice time either. The local teen center turned into a place where a bunch of bro-types would hook up their Xboxes and play each other all night, screaming at one another between rooms. The TV that was used for movies got co-opted into another Xbox resource, so eventually the whole place became a Halo pit. And online Halo (which started with 2, if I recall correctly) changed the dynamic yet again, in a way that's familiar to all of us: kids cussing at one another, players generally acting like little shits. Some of that all would have happened without Microsoft's "Xbox is a manly console for men" marketing push. But you can absolutely look back and say that Microsoft influenced developers in a bad way. Sony made a push to "cut Microsoft off" with titles like God of War, which are similarly quote-unquote epic. Halo opened the door for Tom Clancy games, Call of Duty, Assassin's Creed, on and on. A number of older game developers decided, when they made the change from 2D to 3D, to pursue a similarly "gritty" realism. Now there's a gaming culture wherein genres are solidly defined and there's excruciatingly little variation between game mechanics, visual style, or design mentality, at least in the AAAs. And it's because of how relentlessly Microsoft pushed to divide the market. The old designers either shifted their styles along with this, or they ran out of steam. Sega hasn't made a good game in over a decade – I won't even blame that on their pursuing a "mature and edgy" vibe with the Sonic franchise, though they seem to think that's what gamers want. They just ran out of ideas for where to take Sonic. Rare had a couple of late-era successes, mostly Viva Pińata, but the only thing they've done in five years is Kinect Sports games. And Nintendo? They still stick to their old style, but this many years on Nintendo's flaws as a game developer are showing. Aspects of their games which were totally forgivable when they were building for N64 or even Gamecube are starting to feel like irritatingly deliberate decisions on their part now. And you know what? That would be okay if Nintendo didn't sometimes feel like the only company still pushing that particular aesthetic. If they were one company among many, it wouldn't matter so much, but they're singlehandedly trying to push against the currents of every other game developer on the planet, and it's increasingly becoming clear that they're just not good enough to carry that all by themselves. Obviously, this is a view of just a limited slice of gamer culture. Indie games absolutely borrow from the old-school design mentality more than they do from the Halo mindset; I've seen more whimsy and fun in a single Humble Indie Bundle than I've seen appear on the Xbox 360 since its release. Even there, though, you can feel the influence somewhat, and it's spoiled some games that I really wish I could have enjoyed (namely Bastion). And you do have both occasional lighthearted breakouts (Katamari Damacy) and games that use the self-serious mentality to incredible effect (Demon's Souls). This is a fad which will pass with time, though I'm not so pleased at the thought that our next big wave of developers are the ones developing for mobile and Facebook. Angry Birds and Farmville are not a fun influence. But that's just the way it goes. There'll always be good stuff if you know how to hunt for it. I just miss the fact that for a decade or so, the best games were at the top of the heap or close to it. I don't know if I realized how lucky I was as a kid until that ended. The 90s were a great time to grow up a young gamer.
verygoodyear 14y ago
It's funny that in some ways iOS and Android, arguably the most widely used gaming systems atm, actually foster the kind of games he's talking about wanting to make. There's still the mainstream bro games, but it does seem developers have more of a chance to make a living off their ideas.
maked00 14y ago
True, true. This also applies to most game publishing houses, not just the mothership. There is a group-think mob mentality that ravenously follows the whims of top management as 'hip' and mere players are referred to as scrubs and considered not worthy to make suggestions or criticize. Go to any popular MMO forum and criticize any portion of the games supposed backstory, and prepare for the waterfall of developer lead fanboy rage in response. There are various tropes baked into this culture. All the 'bros' know that universally pet classes must always be second class citizens. Don't overlook how pay to win, and lottery style 'mystery boxes' that asian cultures are so fond of, almost overnight became fixtures in almost every online game now.
hollerith 14y ago
We do not like to discuss it, but a lot of people get a kick out of inflicting harm -- "fucking shit up" in other words -- and some game developers pander to that. I remember a blog post from the late 90s or early 00s that pointed out that the marketing material (trailer or ad copy) for one FPS bragged about the realism of the gore, e.g., of the blood that spurted from the wound when you shot someone.
OGinparadise 14y ago
I'm driven by ideals that fit poorly with an industrialized console monoculture: What if games can connect people? What if they can improve the world? What if they bring happiness and joy to our lives? His company as founded a few minutes ago, 2010 in real years http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spry_Fox http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spry_Fox . Give it a few more years before the holier than though attitude, who knows what you'll do during the next downturn. See Zynga
kenjackson 14y ago
This is an odd post in that almost nothing rings true to me. The PC much more than the console was all about keyboard mashing. And post Kinect launch MS seems even less about hardcore gaming. We don't even need to spend billions to get people to play them. What does that even mean considering I've never heard of them?
jaimebuelta 14y ago
I totally understand him, as I am also "that kind of gamer". I don't have a taste for FPS and I've never owned a console. I play mostly on iOS devices, and before that, Flash games on the PC. But let's not forget that those games are HIGHLY successful, and it clearly seems that there is a huge market for those. I am not surprised that some game companies (MS among them) treat those games like "the only true way". Fortunately, it looks like the gaming industry is expanding and other alternative games are also being created and are easily accessible... Probably the game industry will be more diverse and fragmented as a result, which is great for gamers with not a taste for blockbusters... But while enough people like to play violent FPS, the games are going to stay...
jasonpbecker 14y ago
I sympathize a lot with what was written. I grew up on the Nintendo consoles (my father got an NES from my mom for their first anniversary, which was less than a year before I was born). I really enjoyed playing games straight through my N64 I had as a young teen. But games after that lost a lot of appeal. At the time I thought it was because I was growing up and just wasn't into it any more. Sure, I used to think spending hours playing Super Mario RPG, Diddy Kong Racing, Banjo Kazooie, or Megaman X was a fun afternoon. Maybe I just grew up. But there have been a few games that have come out since that I have really, truly enjoyed. Games like Psychonauts, Portal, Pikmin, and maybe a few other non-P games (e.g., Twilight Princess which is a half-P). Increasingly I have begun to feel like I didn't stop loving games, the games I loved just didn't exist anymore or were too hard to find. I like using a controller. I like playing something I laugh at. I like playing something that stitches together a few basic motions/controls in complex ways to challenge me. I like playing games that are fun with friends or fun for friends to watch you play. So for now, I mostly try and keep an eye on indie games that are cheap on Steam that work well with an Xbox 360 controller (which is really quite nice) on my Mac Mini. Occasionally I come across something fun and well done. But whereas I could rattle off 50 games I would love to play with my kids one day that I consider "classic", almost none of them were created post-Xbox. That's a shame.
- aaronblohowiak 14y ago
  You migh enjoy Braid. It lets you walk, jump and rewind time. Very simple, very very complex.
  - gknoy 14y ago
    Braid is amazing. You progress by finishing levels, and collecting puzzle pieces of a picture for each "world" -- and all seem to be snapshots of a part of a man's life and relationship with a woman. Curiosity drove me on, and at the end I found out that it wasn't at all about what I thought it was about. The game is beautiful, engaging, challenging.
- cheald 14y ago
  Check out Bastion, Recettear, and Magicka. All three are unique in their own ways, and are great experiences. Based on the things you've enjoyed, you might like them, as well. Bastion's easily the best of those three, and while the gameplay is relatively simple, the narration style is something to be cherished. It's beautifully done, and is great fun to watch. Recettear is an odd entry - it's a game about being an item shop owner in a cliche JRPG. It sounds stupid, but it's ridiculously engaging, and the writing it genuinely funny. Magicka is kind of like combining a combo-driven fighting game with an old-school game like Gauntlet. It's very clever, and is likewise very funny.
guntursaptap 14y ago
OK, good luck. Thanks for Information about xbox 360, but i just like PS3
iam 14y ago
Has it ever occurred to the OP that maybe the Xbox 360 was such a huge success precisely because of the culture of the employees there?
- johncarpinelli 14y ago
  Was the Xbox 360 really a huge success? It came second or third in sales for its generation of consoles. 75 million units in seven years is a small number compared to mobile devices. Android sold 144 million devices in Q4 2012 alone. I think the next generation of consoles are going to struggle against cheaper systems like OUYA and tablets. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Console_wars#Worldwide_sales_figures_6 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Console_wars#Worldwide_sales_fi... Wii – 99.38 million as of 31 December 2012 Playstation 3 – (IDC January 2013 estimate: "about 77 million") Xbox 360 – 75.9 million as of 31 December 2012 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smartphone#Historical_sales_figures http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smartphone#Historical_sales_fig...
  - minitrollster 14y ago
    > Was the Xbox 360 really a huge success? It came second or third in sales for its generation of consoles. 75 million units in seven years is a small number compared to mobile devices. Android sold 144 million devices in Q4 2012 alone. Yes it was a huge success. Even though it didn't sell as many consoles as others, its tie ratio flat-out beats[1] both the Wii and the PS3, and that's quite an important metric that's almost never taken into account, but that contributes a great deal to the success of a platform. [1]. http://www.vgchartz.com/analysis/platform_totals/Tie-Ratio/Global/ http://www.vgchartz.com/analysis/platform_totals/Tie-Ratio/G...
    - marshray 14y ago
      So 'tie ratio' is basically number of games sold per hardware unit? Interesting. For example, North America seems to buy about 50% more games per unit than Japan, with the exception of the PS1 and (S)NES. I wonder if/how this affects the projects of different studios? E.g., should we expect games from Japan to tend to have broader appeal?
taude 14y ago
I enjoy playing indie games as well as the corporate blockbusters. I'm glad there's a market for both. However, Is it just me, or can anyone else not wait for Battlefield 4!
jccalhoun 14y ago
so he was working for the company that made the hardware and was shocked to find out that the company was very invested in maximizing the market for their hardware?
outside1234 14y ago
I'm going to refute this whole post with one word: Kinect
chaostheory 14y ago
I'm happy he went indy. His company seems to be doing well. http://spryfox.com/ http://spryfox.com/ I've seen both Triple Town and Steam Birds featured on the App Store. I think both were in the top 10 at one point or another.
LordIllidan 14y ago
I don't think it's just bro types working on Halo, Gears and other FPSes. There was an article (also posted here, I believe) about a woman developer's origin story. http://caitiem.com/2013/03/30/origin-story-becoming-a-game-developer/ http://caitiem.com/2013/03/30/origin-story-becoming-a-game-d... - She worked on Gears and Halo 4. There's a time and a place for all games - the mindless shoot em ups, or the whimsical indie types. Or the serious Dark Souls types. Or even the cinematic types with a ridiculously large cinematic to gameplay ratio.
ChuckMcM 14y ago
I wonder about people exposed to this sort of action from middle school on: "Filling out the gaps in the 7-12 hours ride are moments of rote game play with all possible feedback knobs tuned to 11. Blood, brains, impact. Innovation is located at 11.2. This makes you feel something visceral." Having cognitive issues similar to being exposed to porn from this age on. We are starting to read about people who've come forward and said they are unhappy with their sex life and have tied it back to their early porn exposure. I wonder if there isn't a similar effect in recreational activity. In high school one of my friends was an adrenaline junkie, they were crazy for that feeling of being right on the edge. They satisfied that edge by doing crazy things which could have killed them (sadly eventually it did). But most of my friends weren't affected and while a roller coaster ride was exciting, the lack of adrenaline when hiking didn't ruin hiking for us, or sailing. So do we have people who can't spend their spare time doing something like reading or walking because it doesn't give them a jolt of adrenaline, like we've had folks say they had troubled being satisfied with "normal" sexual relations ? Any thoughts on how we could test that?
- jaetldev 14y ago
  Excessive risk taking could have structural/physiological root causes. http://www.mendeley.com/catalog/impulsivity-risk-taking-behavior-focal-frontal-lobe-lesions/ http://www.mendeley.com/catalog/impulsivity-risk-taking-beha... The authors experiences about gaming seem to be dramatizations of fairly common first world teenage problems - which are exaggerated here for advertising.
bmalicoat 14y ago
The author is making some pretty big generalizations IMO. While I agree there is a culture of gratuitously violent games -- which the market responds positively to -- there are also many incredible games that feature no realistic violence. Fez, Minecraft, LIMBO, and Braid come to mind. I work on the Xbox Platform Team and I feel like we have an accurate representation of the interests of the gaming world (and in fact the non-gaming world -- many people simply don't play games). Maybe things were/are different on the teams actually making games, but my team is very well-rounded. We play FIFA, Spelunky, and Trials Evolution in our down time...obviously the bro-est of games.
aaronbrethorst 14y ago
I hear what he's saying, but I find it ironic that his current gig is making freemium games for mobile, which I believe is a far more damaging trend than FPS games like Halo ever could be. Knock Bioshock Infinite for delivering dollops of voice-acted plot progression along with explosions, headshots, and the like, but at least it doesn't require me to pay a buck-ninety-nine to buy the coins to buy the lockpick to unlock a door. (or wait 12 hours for my city to produce enough coins to buy the lockpick. Whatever.)

Donating my Xbox

228 points by ecaradec 14y ago

mrjava 14y ago

Great post and good luck with the new games!

lolwutreddit 14y ago

tl;dr

mbel 14y ago
It is quite well written and takes 2-3 minutes to read, if you find this piece too long, why are you browsing hacker news in the first place? Seriously, I'm not sarcastic, I'm curious. Most of articles linked here seem to be longer.

emiliobumachar 14y ago

Rule #1 of blogging: if you mention your company or service, it should be a link. I don't have hard data, but I think the need for googling "spry fox" (or guessing the url, spryfox.com) lowers the number of people who go on to the OP's site by a full order of magnitude. Good post otherwise.

Lerc 14y ago
It may just be me but I got the feeling that he wasn't posting this in order to draw traffic.
muyuu 14y ago
It could be that this wasn't just a marketing effort. Ever thought about that? like, speaking your mind without looking for an immediate reward.
QuixoticChris 14y ago
It adds credibility and class to the post though. It keeps the attention on the post's content, and feels less like a random plug.
- visakanv 14y ago
  Eventually, people will develop strong immunities to random plugs, and all marketing will have to be this way- subtle, genuine, real. Can't wait.
  - unalone 14y ago
    This is assuming that this post is primarily marketing rather than a guy who is emotionally invested in both game design and his past getting something off of his chest. Sure, it acts as self-promotion, but it's cynical to assume that everything that promotes anything was created first and foremost to sell stuff.
Morcane 14y ago
lol you want an 'let me Google that' achievement?
werid 14y ago
just what every g+ post needs. a signature with all the information you've entered into your profile!

BlokkiesJoubert 14y ago

As usual, it is per definition very bad for men (white men) to have something - a club, a community - of their own.

Karunamon 14y ago
If that's what you're getting from this article, you either have very strange ways of reading the same text I did, or you are a fool. The entire point of this rant was that the author did not feel welcome in this "club, community" and didn't like what it entails. I can sympathize with that somewhat, and I bet you can too.
- walshemj 14y ago
  well the op seems to like the Kawaii elements but some of the more intense Kawaii stuff can verge on creepy.

iMark 14y ago

I'm not a games developer, but I can relate to what Daniel wrote about game forms, after playing Bioshock Infinite. I love the game, but I did so mostly for elements of the design and story, rather than the game play. That it was an FPS connecting the story rather than a puzzle game, for example, was almost incidental to my enjoyment of it, and given the story, I think a series of Myst-style puzzles would have been a better fit. Wouldn't have sold nearly as well, of course, and there's the rub.

kenshi 14y ago
The reason I am not going to buy Bioshock Infinite is precisely because it seems like a pretty mediocre FPS, married to an interesting narrative and/or exploration game. Don't get me wrong, I love FPS shooters. So when I want to play one, I want it to be good. I also enjoy exploration games, and from what I have seen of Bioshock Infinite (I watched the ending and playthroughs on Youtube), it seems like it would have made for a great Myst style game. If anything the gameplay looks like the weakest part of Bioshock Infinite. I actually thing Irrational missed a big opportunity by making the game a FPS. Wasn't Myst a big commercial success back in the day? Wouldn't they have been able to appeal to a wider audience if they had tied the narrative to a something other than a FPS?
- baby 14y ago
  This is exactly why I'm not in a rush to play this game. I will at some point try it but the first Bioshock lacked so much feeling and the gunfights were so boring that I'm really not into this new episode. I'm still glad that they use a First-Person perspective because I strongly believe that it's the best way to get immersed in a game.
- Gigablah 14y ago
  Eh, there's a history behind the franchise. It's not like Irrational started out with a story and turned it into an FPS. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/System_Shock_2 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/System_Shock_2
- msabalau 14y ago

muyuu 14y ago

This is so glorious I almost want to undelete my Google profile to give my first +1 that never happened. Almost. Still, great post with which I sympathise greatly.

baby 14y ago

> Strategy over button mashing! That made me think of QTE. We never needed those things, but still they gave it to us. And keeps giving it to us. It's lazy gameplay, it's a "I'm a developer, I have a cutscene and I'm too bored to integrate real gameplay into it".

lloeki 14y ago
As always there's balance to be had: done right it gives a sense of urgency and involvement in what would otherwise be another "lean back and watch things happen" cutscene, whereas done wrong it annoyingly interrupts the flow at best. Personal experience: God of War QTEs feel entirely disconnected and over the top, whereas (Square's) Tomb Raider QTEs help in breaking the fourth wall and draws me into the scene.
- joosters 14y ago
  Zero Punctuation's Tomb Raider review would disagree; not just the QTEs but the increasingly common scenes where 'you have control' but if you don't immediately head in the right direction you'll die. It's not just Tomb Raider, Uncharted is also repeatedly guilty of this. http://www.escapistmagazine.com/videos/view/zero-punctuation/7025-Tomb-Raider http://www.escapistmagazine.com/videos/view/zero-punctuation...
- baby 14y ago
  I was thinking of Tomb Raider when I say it was lazy gameplay.
spacemanaki 14y ago
Agree with lloeki to some extent, but with a different game in mind: the Walking Dead. All of the action sequences are done with QTEs, but they are sprinkled through the game and are pretty varied in style. I think in the context of an otherwise slow-paced adventure game it works pretty well.
Nick_C 14y ago
My particular pet peeve is not being able to replay a cutscene. "Wait, what did he say, I couldn't hear it." Or the phone rang and I got distracted. And it turns out to be an important plot detail that I missed. Aargh.

realo 14y ago

IMHO his article was a good read. I even fell for the Spry Fox thing and actually visited his website. Judging by the colorful first page of the site, his games seem cool and fun... Want to see them... I click PLAY, with a Sunday morning expectation of something interesting coming up. BLAM! A f*ing Facebook login screen. I am not a Facebook user. Never will be. Too bad. I look again at his web page with a sense of loss. _His_ loss of my attention. Back to my Sunday morning coffee, on to the next article in HN.

andrewcooke 14y ago
I was similarly disappointed, but dug out an android device and installed something town for free. it was quite interesting - based on the mechanic where changing one square in a grid affects the state of neighbours.
- potkor 14y ago
  Triple Town. It's great though it's freemium (150 turns/day limit).
bajsejohannes 14y ago
One of the games do not require login: Leap Day. http://leapdaygame.com http://leapdaygame.com (Disclaimer: I worked on that game)
- logic 14y ago
  A black screen that says nothing but "Unity Web Player Install Now!" might as well be a facebook login screen to me, I'm afraid.
vitesse 14y ago
You can play Panda Poet anonymously or with a google account. Supports almost any html5-ish browser with no plugins. I am the dev. http://game.pandapoet.com/ http://game.pandapoet.com/

unalone 14y ago

When I was a kid I hated the Xbox, hated Halo, and hated how it seemed to create a new model for playing games. It was released when I was in middle school, and I remember there being a sudden and abrupt shift in what kind of gaming mentality there was. Prior to the Xbox, console games were largely focused on lush, whimsical landscapes with mechanics that required some puzzling to figure out. At least, the games that kids played, anyway; I know Unreal Tournament and Doom and Quake were big, but looking back I think those games all had a whimsy to them as well. The arsenal in Unreal is way sillier than anything Halo's ever had to offer (even Halo's energy sword seems kind of rote). And the major titles on the N64 and Playstation and Dreamcast were titles like Mario and Sonic and Crash Bandicoot – colorful worlds, puzzles often based on platforming. Developers like Nintendo and Rare had a knack for creating controls and visuals that seem to reward you for getting into them, so that even Rare's Goldeneye 007 felt like an utterly silly game. (Proximity mine in the toilet!) When Halo came out, it was immediately apparent that this was Microsoft's grand new vision of gaming – "realistic" graphics, self-seriousness, achievements, and an ugly competitive edge. My memories of Halo are almost all multiplayer, obviously: generally, six kids sitting by a machine, two of them unhappy because they sucked and consequently were cycled out every other game, meaning they didn't get practice time either. The local teen center turned into a place where a bunch of bro-types would hook up their Xboxes and play each other all night, screaming at one another between rooms. The TV that was used for movies got co-opted into another Xbox resource, so eventually the whole place became a Halo pit. And online Halo (which started with 2, if I recall correctly) changed the dynamic yet again, in a way that's familiar to all of us: kids cussing at one another, players generally acting like little shits. Some of that all would have happened without Microsoft's "Xbox is a manly console for men" marketing push. But you can absolutely look back and say that Microsoft influenced developers in a bad way. Sony made a push to "cut Microsoft off" with titles like God of War, which are similarly quote-unquote epic. Halo opened the door for Tom Clancy games, Call of Duty, Assassin's Creed, on and on. A number of older game developers decided, when they made the change from 2D to 3D, to pursue a similarly "gritty" realism. Now there's a gaming culture wherein genres are solidly defined and there's excruciatingly little variation between game mechanics, visual style, or design mentality, at least in the AAAs. And it's because of how relentlessly Microsoft pushed to divide the market. The old designers either shifted their styles along with this, or they ran out of steam. Sega hasn't made a good game in over a decade – I won't even blame that on their pursuing a "mature and edgy" vibe with the Sonic franchise, though they seem to think that's what gamers want. They just ran out of ideas for where to take Sonic. Rare had a couple of late-era successes, mostly Viva Pińata, but the only thing they've done in five years is Kinect Sports games. And Nintendo? They still stick to their old style, but this many years on Nintendo's flaws as a game developer are showing. Aspects of their games which were totally forgivable when they were building for N64 or even Gamecube are starting to feel like irritatingly deliberate decisions on their part now. And you know what? That would be okay if Nintendo didn't sometimes feel like the only company still pushing that particular aesthetic. If they were one company among many, it wouldn't matter so much, but they're singlehandedly trying to push against the currents of every other game developer on the planet, and it's increasingly becoming clear that they're just not good enough to carry that all by themselves. Obviously, this is a view of just a limited slice of gamer culture. Indie games absolutely borrow from the old-school design mentality more than they do from the Halo mindset; I've seen more whimsy and fun in a single Humble Indie Bundle than I've seen appear on the Xbox 360 since its release. Even there, though, you can feel the influence somewhat, and it's spoiled some games that I really wish I could have enjoyed (namely Bastion). And you do have both occasional lighthearted breakouts (Katamari Damacy) and games that use the self-serious mentality to incredible effect (Demon's Souls). This is a fad which will pass with time, though I'm not so pleased at the thought that our next big wave of developers are the ones developing for mobile and Facebook. Angry Birds and Farmville are not a fun influence. But that's just the way it goes. There'll always be good stuff if you know how to hunt for it. I just miss the fact that for a decade or so, the best games were at the top of the heap or close to it. I don't know if I realized how lucky I was as a kid until that ended. The 90s were a great time to grow up a young gamer.

verygoodyear 14y ago

It's funny that in some ways iOS and Android, arguably the most widely used gaming systems atm, actually foster the kind of games he's talking about wanting to make. There's still the mainstream bro games, but it does seem developers have more of a chance to make a living off their ideas.

maked00 14y ago

True, true. This also applies to most game publishing houses, not just the mothership. There is a group-think mob mentality that ravenously follows the whims of top management as 'hip' and mere players are referred to as scrubs and considered not worthy to make suggestions or criticize. Go to any popular MMO forum and criticize any portion of the games supposed backstory, and prepare for the waterfall of developer lead fanboy rage in response. There are various tropes baked into this culture. All the 'bros' know that universally pet classes must always be second class citizens. Don't overlook how pay to win, and lottery style 'mystery boxes' that asian cultures are so fond of, almost overnight became fixtures in almost every online game now.

hollerith 14y ago

We do not like to discuss it, but a lot of people get a kick out of inflicting harm -- "fucking shit up" in other words -- and some game developers pander to that. I remember a blog post from the late 90s or early 00s that pointed out that the marketing material (trailer or ad copy) for one FPS bragged about the realism of the gore, e.g., of the blood that spurted from the wound when you shot someone.

OGinparadise 14y ago

I'm driven by ideals that fit poorly with an industrialized console monoculture: What if games can connect people? What if they can improve the world? What if they bring happiness and joy to our lives? His company as founded a few minutes ago, 2010 in real years http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spry_Fox http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spry_Fox . Give it a few more years before the holier than though attitude, who knows what you'll do during the next downturn. See Zynga

kenjackson 14y ago

This is an odd post in that almost nothing rings true to me. The PC much more than the console was all about keyboard mashing. And post Kinect launch MS seems even less about hardcore gaming. We don't even need to spend billions to get people to play them. What does that even mean considering I've never heard of them?

jaimebuelta 14y ago

I totally understand him, as I am also "that kind of gamer". I don't have a taste for FPS and I've never owned a console. I play mostly on iOS devices, and before that, Flash games on the PC. But let's not forget that those games are HIGHLY successful, and it clearly seems that there is a huge market for those. I am not surprised that some game companies (MS among them) treat those games like "the only true way". Fortunately, it looks like the gaming industry is expanding and other alternative games are also being created and are easily accessible... Probably the game industry will be more diverse and fragmented as a result, which is great for gamers with not a taste for blockbusters... But while enough people like to play violent FPS, the games are going to stay...

jasonpbecker 14y ago

I sympathize a lot with what was written. I grew up on the Nintendo consoles (my father got an NES from my mom for their first anniversary, which was less than a year before I was born). I really enjoyed playing games straight through my N64 I had as a young teen. But games after that lost a lot of appeal. At the time I thought it was because I was growing up and just wasn't into it any more. Sure, I used to think spending hours playing Super Mario RPG, Diddy Kong Racing, Banjo Kazooie, or Megaman X was a fun afternoon. Maybe I just grew up. But there have been a few games that have come out since that I have really, truly enjoyed. Games like Psychonauts, Portal, Pikmin, and maybe a few other non-P games (e.g., Twilight Princess which is a half-P). Increasingly I have begun to feel like I didn't stop loving games, the games I loved just didn't exist anymore or were too hard to find. I like using a controller. I like playing something I laugh at. I like playing something that stitches together a few basic motions/controls in complex ways to challenge me. I like playing games that are fun with friends or fun for friends to watch you play. So for now, I mostly try and keep an eye on indie games that are cheap on Steam that work well with an Xbox 360 controller (which is really quite nice) on my Mac Mini. Occasionally I come across something fun and well done. But whereas I could rattle off 50 games I would love to play with my kids one day that I consider "classic", almost none of them were created post-Xbox. That's a shame.

aaronblohowiak 14y ago
You migh enjoy Braid. It lets you walk, jump and rewind time. Very simple, very very complex.
- gknoy 14y ago
  Braid is amazing. You progress by finishing levels, and collecting puzzle pieces of a picture for each "world" -- and all seem to be snapshots of a part of a man's life and relationship with a woman. Curiosity drove me on, and at the end I found out that it wasn't at all about what I thought it was about. The game is beautiful, engaging, challenging.
cheald 14y ago
Check out Bastion, Recettear, and Magicka. All three are unique in their own ways, and are great experiences. Based on the things you've enjoyed, you might like them, as well. Bastion's easily the best of those three, and while the gameplay is relatively simple, the narration style is something to be cherished. It's beautifully done, and is great fun to watch. Recettear is an odd entry - it's a game about being an item shop owner in a cliche JRPG. It sounds stupid, but it's ridiculously engaging, and the writing it genuinely funny. Magicka is kind of like combining a combo-driven fighting game with an old-school game like Gauntlet. It's very clever, and is likewise very funny.

guntursaptap 14y ago

OK, good luck. Thanks for Information about xbox 360, but i just like PS3

iam 14y ago

Has it ever occurred to the OP that maybe the Xbox 360 was such a huge success precisely because of the culture of the employees there?

johncarpinelli 14y ago
Was the Xbox 360 really a huge success? It came second or third in sales for its generation of consoles. 75 million units in seven years is a small number compared to mobile devices. Android sold 144 million devices in Q4 2012 alone. I think the next generation of consoles are going to struggle against cheaper systems like OUYA and tablets. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Console_wars#Worldwide_sales_figures_6 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Console_wars#Worldwide_sales_fi... Wii – 99.38 million as of 31 December 2012 Playstation 3 – (IDC January 2013 estimate: "about 77 million") Xbox 360 – 75.9 million as of 31 December 2012 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smartphone#Historical_sales_figures http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smartphone#Historical_sales_fig...
- minitrollster 14y ago
  > Was the Xbox 360 really a huge success? It came second or third in sales for its generation of consoles. 75 million units in seven years is a small number compared to mobile devices. Android sold 144 million devices in Q4 2012 alone. Yes it was a huge success. Even though it didn't sell as many consoles as others, its tie ratio flat-out beats[1] both the Wii and the PS3, and that's quite an important metric that's almost never taken into account, but that contributes a great deal to the success of a platform. [1]. http://www.vgchartz.com/analysis/platform_totals/Tie-Ratio/Global/ http://www.vgchartz.com/analysis/platform_totals/Tie-Ratio/G...
  - marshray 14y ago
    So 'tie ratio' is basically number of games sold per hardware unit? Interesting. For example, North America seems to buy about 50% more games per unit than Japan, with the exception of the PS1 and (S)NES. I wonder if/how this affects the projects of different studios? E.g., should we expect games from Japan to tend to have broader appeal?

taude 14y ago

I enjoy playing indie games as well as the corporate blockbusters. I'm glad there's a market for both. However, Is it just me, or can anyone else not wait for Battlefield 4!

jccalhoun 14y ago

so he was working for the company that made the hardware and was shocked to find out that the company was very invested in maximizing the market for their hardware?

outside1234 14y ago

I'm going to refute this whole post with one word: Kinect

chaostheory 14y ago

I'm happy he went indy. His company seems to be doing well. http://spryfox.com/ http://spryfox.com/ I've seen both Triple Town and Steam Birds featured on the App Store. I think both were in the top 10 at one point or another.

LordIllidan 14y ago

I don't think it's just bro types working on Halo, Gears and other FPSes. There was an article (also posted here, I believe) about a woman developer's origin story. http://caitiem.com/2013/03/30/origin-story-becoming-a-game-developer/ http://caitiem.com/2013/03/30/origin-story-becoming-a-game-d... - She worked on Gears and Halo 4. There's a time and a place for all games - the mindless shoot em ups, or the whimsical indie types. Or the serious Dark Souls types. Or even the cinematic types with a ridiculously large cinematic to gameplay ratio.

ChuckMcM 14y ago

I wonder about people exposed to this sort of action from middle school on: "Filling out the gaps in the 7-12 hours ride are moments of rote game play with all possible feedback knobs tuned to 11. Blood, brains, impact. Innovation is located at 11.2. This makes you feel something visceral." Having cognitive issues similar to being exposed to porn from this age on. We are starting to read about people who've come forward and said they are unhappy with their sex life and have tied it back to their early porn exposure. I wonder if there isn't a similar effect in recreational activity. In high school one of my friends was an adrenaline junkie, they were crazy for that feeling of being right on the edge. They satisfied that edge by doing crazy things which could have killed them (sadly eventually it did). But most of my friends weren't affected and while a roller coaster ride was exciting, the lack of adrenaline when hiking didn't ruin hiking for us, or sailing. So do we have people who can't spend their spare time doing something like reading or walking because it doesn't give them a jolt of adrenaline, like we've had folks say they had troubled being satisfied with "normal" sexual relations ? Any thoughts on how we could test that?

jaetldev 14y ago
Excessive risk taking could have structural/physiological root causes. http://www.mendeley.com/catalog/impulsivity-risk-taking-behavior-focal-frontal-lobe-lesions/ http://www.mendeley.com/catalog/impulsivity-risk-taking-beha... The authors experiences about gaming seem to be dramatizations of fairly common first world teenage problems - which are exaggerated here for advertising.

bmalicoat 14y ago

The author is making some pretty big generalizations IMO. While I agree there is a culture of gratuitously violent games -- which the market responds positively to -- there are also many incredible games that feature no realistic violence. Fez, Minecraft, LIMBO, and Braid come to mind. I work on the Xbox Platform Team and I feel like we have an accurate representation of the interests of the gaming world (and in fact the non-gaming world -- many people simply don't play games). Maybe things were/are different on the teams actually making games, but my team is very well-rounded. We play FIFA, Spelunky, and Trials Evolution in our down time...obviously the bro-est of games.

aaronbrethorst 14y ago

I hear what he's saying, but I find it ironic that his current gig is making freemium games for mobile, which I believe is a far more damaging trend than FPS games like Halo ever could be. Knock Bioshock Infinite for delivering dollops of voice-acted plot progression along with explosions, headshots, and the like, but at least it doesn't require me to pay a buck-ninety-nine to buy the coins to buy the lockpick to unlock a door. (or wait 12 hours for my city to produce enough coins to buy the lockpick. Whatever.)