Jimquisition: GUNS GUNS GUNS GUNS GUNS GUNS GUNS

[Chairman Miaow]

snip.

I typed out a big post but my internet crashed and it was deleted. Here is the summary:

I misunderstood your stance a little.
I agree with you then.
Still interested in what would happen if marketing focus was on another genre.
FPS's appeal to a broader audience, consumers aren't at fault for buying games they like.
Publisher's need to appeal to their shareholders and make money, not at fault for not taking pointless risks.

 

[Vozati]

it seemed at E3 Nintendo was the only one that had games that kids could play. They should show games at E3 for ever age group not just the teens and adults who like FPS.

E3 is an industry only event, and minors under the age of 18 are not allowed.

 

[LordFish]

Everybody is saying how much they love shooters but this is just all too much... Spare a thought for those of us who don't even particularly like shooters to start with!

It's OK, HumbleBundle V came at just the right time.

 

[Twinmill5000]

I like guns. I like guns. I really like guns. I love guns. Guns. I love you. I like guns. I like guns. I like guns. I like guns.

Know what I like more than guns?
Variety. And variety in guns (Borderlands 2).

Alot of the games I saw were good imo, too. I'm not gonna call Halo 4 bad for being a sequel to the last real halo game ever or at least that's what they had us think. I like where they went with it.

I'm probably gonna get BF3 Premium, it's cheaper than buying the expansion packs individually if I remember, and you get more. I like BF3. I'm going to spend more money on a PC to run GW2 perfectly with Tera in the background and when I'm bored, maybe alittle Borderlands 2 as a pallet cleanser (already have so far), than I ever will on the games themselves anyway.

Borderlands 2 is a GoTY Candidate. Calling it now.

So I have no problem with guns, or the games themselves... know what I'd have liked to see, however?

Maybe a Riot Games booth. Maybe some new MMOs. Maybe a mech themed game. Anything. Maybe something on Project Titan. I don't know. Something.

 

[targren]

By doing this, they accidently created a wave of Yes Men and now Mr Sterling cannot tell that the whole ego thing is wearing quite thin. (At least for me anyway.) It's all a massive shame really, to echo what Mark B had said while Jim might be right on the money and have a lot of interesting points to make - but his argument is being lost in his schtick.

I don't mind the schtick, it's part of the persona and it's amusing enough, but that one was like a family guy joke. Thirty seconds would have been plenty. After that, I just grabbed the scroller.

 

[ThunderCavalier]

If we're just going to go for FPSs nowadays, I hope The Last of Us does happen to have some kind of fairly good story and at least sparks a trend of FPSs with semi-good stories. I mean, if we're going to saturate the market with FPSs, we could at least make them really good FPSs.

last of us?

a FPS?

.....whaaaaaaat???

Forgive me.

Action-Adventure Survival whatever the hell it is.

... That just happens to have a cover mechanic and gunplay.

(You know... like most FPSs anyways.)

 

[Vault101]

Forgive me.

Action-Adventure Survival whatever the hell it is.

... That just happens to have a cover mechanic and gunplay.

(You know... like most FPSs anyways.)

I havnt really played a FPS with an actual "cover" mechanic excpet Deus Ex (which also had a big does of RPG)

anyway, I'm actually talking about the perspective

for example Gears of war is NOT a FPS

 

[CrazyBlaze]

Stop blaming publishers and blame the consumers Jim!
They are not gonna waste money on new things if we only buy the same old crap!
But no no no you just keep screaming."THE PUBLISHERS THE PUBLISHERS IT'S ALWAYS THE PUBLISHERS !"
Once the consumers start buying new things the publishers will make new things.

Its more a fault on both sides. If all publishers advertise and let people know are out, are shooters than that is all people will buy. If they were advertise games that break the mould or at least try to then those games would be more likely to sell better. Also publishers and finical backers like solid bets, or at least what seem to be solid bets. We see this everywhere. Avatar is a great example of this. It brought us an extremely good 3D movie. Now every other movie is trying to do the same but having less success because they think it was purely the fact it was in 3D was the reason it was good when it was actually because it was shoot in 3D and not shoot in 2D and transferred to 3D. The gaming equivalent of this is Call of Duty. A shooter that brings (or brought depending how you look at it) an engaging multi-player and earns hundreds of millions within the first two months it is out. So publishers see that and hope they can get the same sort of cash flow by making a very similar game.

So while it is the consumers paying with their money in a couple of games it is also the publishers hope to be one of those receiving that money. It is a two way street.

 

[Freaky Lou]

It says a lot when Sony stuck out the most this year with a Smash Bros. Brawl game, a new Heavy Rain, and a new Uncharted. *sigh*

Sony all stars is a clone of SSB but Beyond can break out the mold of heavy rain and the last of us can break out of uncharted mold as well. I heard the last of us is open world while uncharted was scripted.

I saw more or less the same disconnected mo-cap acting in the trailer of Beyond as I did in Heavy Rain. And as for the gameplay, I doubt it'll be any less wooden and awkward. But let's hope for the best.

And if The Last of Us is an open world game then I'm a firetruck. It would be cool if it was, but I don't think graphics of that caliber are possible in a current gen open world game. I'm sure there'll be sections that allow you to take a different approach to the situation, but I reckon the majority of the game will be very similarly structured to Uncharted, i.e. heavily linear and scripted.

Weren't Far Cry 2 and Crysis open-world?

 

[Beautiful End]

Yeah, it was kinda anticlimactic. It's sad because this was the first E3 I've watched almost entirely and...then this. Nintendo was all about that dumb WiiU and their 3DS conference made me fall asleep when they spent around 15 minutes on Paper Mario and then 1 minute on KingdomHeartsCastlevaniathatotherMickeyMousegameandsomeothergamesthatyoumightlookforwardtobuthtye'renotMario! Microsoft was all Kinect Kinect Kinect Kinect Kinect Kinect Kinect Kinect Usher Kinect Kinect Kinect Kinect Kinect Kinect Kinect. So yeah, Sony was actually the best one as far as the big three go. It's cool, though. I love my PS3.

I'm slightly disappointed with this console generation. It's all so gray and gloomy and post-apocalyptic. I miss the old generations where you had more variety when it came to genres and much more colors.

The Jennifer Love Hewitt of videogames? Mmm, I do love me some Jennifer Lo--

JIM, WHAT HAVE YOU DONE TO ME?! UGHHH! CANNOT UNSEE!

 

[=HCFS=Discoman]

I wonder...are people just only wanting modern FPS games, so the companies are too Adria to make much else, or do the companies just go with it because they think that is what everyone wants?
I go online and all I hear about is CoD or Battlefield in the games that are unique and different. Sure, I still play Team Fortress 2. Even Team Fortress Classic. But all I hear about is how those modern FPS games are better than these more unusual and less realistic games.
Now, that is just my experience, but judging just from that, the average gamer (who in this day and age doesn't probably identify as a gamer) just wants a game where they play as a soldier in Iraq or some other Middle Eastern country, and as they seem to be in the majority, companies simply try to make those games so they have some money.
Personally, while shooters are one of my favorite genres, I prefer some difference. Give me somehting fun, unusual, and quirky like TF2. Or for other genres, give me something totally out there, like Recettear (I hope I spelled that right)or a music game like audiosurf.
As much as I love shooting stuff in games, I would rather have variety and play The Wonderful End of The World, which is cheap and amusing entertainment.
Yeah, I'd love to see lots of variety, but it seems like the majority of the customers want the moderns shooters, and I for one would rather have the company stay around longer with the chances of a game that is different vs going out of business.

off topic, but the captcha is yellow-belly. I feel a little insulted.

 

[Gunner 51]

By doing this, they accidently created a wave of Yes Men and now Mr Sterling cannot tell that the whole ego thing is wearing quite thin. (At least for me anyway.) It's all a massive shame really, to echo what Mark B had said while Jim might be right on the money and have a lot of interesting points to make - but his argument is being lost in his schtick.

I don't mind the schtick, it's part of the persona and it's amusing enough, but that one was like a family guy joke. Thirty seconds would have been plenty. After that, I just grabbed the scroller.

I can agree with that, Targen. Thirty seconds is ample time for a joke. Two and a half minutes is way too long. (Unless you're Albert Wesker - who can take up to 7 minutes...)

 

[ElPatron]

But that's where the rest of the shooters go wrong, I think most have had their fill of brown and gray realistic shooters

Wow, 2/2 gripes found.

- Call of Duty & Co. are effing Halo with different skins. That thing is not realistic despite what their marketing teams tell us. The problem is not the fact that CoD & Co. aren't realistic, the problem is that actual realistic shooters exist. If CoD is realistic, then what means being realistic? Does not compute.

- Brown shooters. Nobody gets as disgusted as me when I see screenshots of gray shooters. But the fact is that the Middle East IS brown. The day it turns purple I'll start complaining. Sometimes it feels like people forget that shooters go trough phases that we all get tired of - the problem is in the setting.

Everybody is saying how much they love shooters but this is just all too much... Spare a thought for those of us who don't even particularly like shooters to start with!

>implying we control what happens at E3

In the video Jim Sterling said that we had nearly the same amount of shooters as last year - the problem is that we are more exposed to them and that leads us to think that there's more shooting than before.

You will get your games and so is everyone else.

Goddamn it, if I use the same logic I could rant about fantasy RPGs and Japanese "adult" games and how they are robbing me of my RTS and shooters.

 

[ElPatron]

Realistic compared to Borderlands Don't take it out of context.

Then any game can be considered "realistic" by that logic. Just saying.

Good point on the theme, but you can still make variations on style instead of going for realistic design(not gameplay).

Okay, so how do you make a game set in the Middle East with balls-to-the-wall Quake gameplay? It would generate a lot of bad PR by insulting the troops who are dying in a real war.

current pretentious choices on the market.

I didn't want to create yet another parallel reply but what exactly makes CoD or BF pretentious?

 

[ElPatron]

Then any game can be considered "realistic" by that logic. Just saying.

Still out of context, you're not reffering to anything that's actually been said.

What was said was that they were realistic compared to Borderlands.
Which also makes Halo realistic compared to The Witcher.

Bad PR? I think the US of A has that covered fairly nicely. If you don't want to insult troops, don't send them off to die for political power and money.

At any rate, it's fairly easy. you can use cell-shading, you can make a parody based on wars in the middle east, like C&C Generals did, among others. Because games are supposed to be fun. I know the concept is daunting, but most games are there to actually entertain you.

Wow, political arguments. I was talking about bad PR for the game. Now who's taking things out of context?

Insulting troops is a bad thing to do, even when at peace.

Cell-shading? Wow, changing the visuals will obviously make everyone happy about a game in the Middle East.

And how nice of you to imply that shooters can't entertain people if they are "serious". I guess we should stop calling movies in general "entertainment" because Saw, Hostel, Blade Runner, Capote, The King's Speech, etc are far too serious.

Well, since you yourself mentioned that the very same shooters aren't "realistic", I should think you know the answer. If they're not realistic, and yet that's what they aim for, then they would be pretentious.

They don't try to aim for realism. ARMA, old Rainbow Six and Ghost Recon titles, SWAT, Operation Flashpoint, etc aim for realism.

The game never claims it's realistic. Perhaps it might have been mentioned in ads but I honestly don't remember if they actually claimed to be "realistic".

If they're not supposed to be realistic, then I don't really see the point in them, which leads us back to my original post which explained why I prefer colorful exaggerated games.

So something can't be unrealistic while at the time featuring realistic visuals and settings?

There is a demand for that content. In the past decades there was a demand for Rambo movies. They are not an accurate depiction of war but they *look* like real wars.

They have a point despite your opinion. It's perfectly reasonable to not like them but saying that you can't see their advantages is stretching.