Vegosiux said:
Rebel_Raven said:
I'm not denying the popularity of minecraft, but what has minecraft -really- changed? I haven't seen any huge ripples of change here.
Yeah, the early access thing, yeah it spawned some games built on it's engine, or similar games largely on PC, but I'm not seeing it have much of an influence on gaming and it's one of the greatest indie games ever.
The rise of survival horrors, the side scrolling types, the metroidvanias, and everything popular on PC I don't see much impact on consoles.
People are overestimating the impact Minecraft had on the industry itself, IMO.
I'm not saying it's impossible to see indie games do this, but I'm still waiting to really see it, even with the rise of indie games.
Okay, let me just clear one thing up here.
When you're talking about what games can change the scene, are you talking about "The One Game to Change It all", or are you talking about "No individual snowflake in an avalanche has ever changed anything"? Because the way I see it, you seem to be a bit fixated on how there has to be a groundbreaking game that will turn the industry inside out, and not giving enough credit to a large number of not-world-shattering games setting a trend.
Now it's ultimately the end consumer that technically has the final say in anything, but things are a lot more complex, I mean, there are people who get paid on figuring out how to make us think we want what they're selling us, and sometimes what they're selling us is videogames...
Still, I would be quite confident to make a claim that no single game can shift the course of the entire AAA industry in this regard.
I'm talking about both, really.
There won't likely be that one ground breaking game, hence why I'm down on Minecraft's influence on gaming. I won't say it's impossible to make a game with a female lead that's so damned great that the industry gives up it's hostility towards them, but it's incredibly unlikely.
And even with the indie scene by and large, I'm not seeing much influence outside the indie scene. I mean there's a massive proliferation of First Person Survival Horrors, side scrollers, control the Hand(s) games, but I don't see much influence on the industry as a whole. None of them are really leading the game industry outside of indie games.
Why? None of them made enough money that the industry outside of indie wants to cash in on the game concepts. Until they do, their actual impact is not even on my radar. I'm not knocking the fun factor, mind you.
I'd say it'll be extremely difficult to try and show the gaming industry what we want based on indie games, or voting with our wallets even. See, Market Testers are pretty flawed. Not all of them, but enough to keep hampering game industry maturation.
Lets look at Overstrike turned Fuse due to market testing. I loved overstrike. It had soul. Now? Meh.
Lets look at Naughty Dog having to ask for female members of test groups.
Market testers poison the well. They cherry pick, they get groups to confirm things, not get opinions, and a lot of screwy things. Again, not all of them, but enough.
Moreover test groups are flawed. They're more inclined to say what they think the testers, and the rest of the group want to hear. And here's a stumbling block in that they say they want something like CoD, or God of War (the God of War clones sure died off quick, though, huh?) but they already have what they think/know they want so they aren't likely to buy it again.
The real answer, IMO, is to give Devs free reign, which they don't always have.
My Spoiler posted a bit back is full of incidents where circumstances, usully pressure from above, forced women out of a game.
