Rayman Origins deserves to have been so much more successful

[Saucycarpdog]

I use photoshop and I work with artists who use photoshop and other digital aids, I see how quickly they can create work

The devs of Rayman: origins would NOT be foolish enough to draw on paper and scan rather than draw then direct in graphics suites, and I fact they use UbiArt graphics suite and boast ho they keep costs low.

Game Informer, Issue 218
http://ubi-art.uk.ubi.com/2010/06/14/about-the-things-we-use-in-ubiart-framework/

Again FIVE people animated this entire game. A likely impossible task for a 3D game unless it repeated a LOT of redundant elements or borrowed modified much from elsewhere.

As it looks like you didn't read much of my post I will clarify that I'm not talking about Rayman. I was talking about the fact that Hand drawn artists are much more and harder to come by than 3d artists. I don't know what Rayman did but I was pointing out that about hand drawn artists which from your post sounded like 3d artists were higher in level than hand drawn artists which is not true.

 

[Treeinthewoods]

Maybe $60 on disc is simply the wrong price for this game regardless of perfection it is STILL just a 2D plat-former, it really should be a downloadable titled for $15-20, even as high as $25. But not $60. No way.

Also Ubisoft have been asshats recently (spreading bad blood amongst PC gamers will not give you good press) and 2D platformers have hardly been all that popular of recent years/decades except where the form factor forces it such as on portable devices.

Just compare with Splosion man, a 2D movement game but fully 3D and an extremely novel gameplay mechanic and highly kinetic style yet not TOO fast that you can't follow what's going on. And it's a $15 downloadable title.

Too expensive, I can get lot's of amazing platformers for a much lower ticket price.

Anybody who wants full price from me needs to put out a little more than a 2D platformer, anybody who wants to sell me a 2D platformer needs to consider the price I'm willing to pay.

So because it's a 2D platformer means that it shouldn't be the price that it is? Because it's a 2D platformer, it's inherently worse than other genres?

;-; is this how gamers are? /deathofanindustrygeneral

Well, it wasn't me that did it, it was the industry as a whole. How many absolutely fantastic (recent) platformers are there that are mind blowingly awesome? Comic Jumper, Splosion Man, Super Meat Boy, Braid... all amazing games, all for less than a regular retail game. The game developers have shown us that a 2D platformer can be fantastic for less money than a 3D FPS or similar AAA title, it's the price the market accepted and now views as standard.

Rayman Origins on PSN, XBL and Steam for $30 would have sold like hotcakes when the reviews hit.

Curse the market, curse the developers, don't curse the gamers for shifting perceptions of value.

 

[Balobo]

Well, it wasn't me that did it, it was the industry as a whole. How many absolutely fantastic (recent) platformers are there that are mind blowingly awesome? Comic Jumper, Splosion Man, Super Meat Boy, Braid... all amazing games, all for less than a regular retail game. The game developers have shown us that a 2D platformer can be fantastic for less money than a 3D FPS or similar AAA title, it's the price the market accepted and now views as standard.

Rayman Origins on PSN, XBL and Steam for $30 would have sold like hotcakes when the reviews hit.

Curse the market, curse the developers, don't curse the gamers for shifting perceptions of value.

So regardless of the game's quality, it should be sold for a budget price on the basis that it's a 2D platformer?

 

[zombieshark6666]

Marketing, colors, quality or whatever doesn't matter if people don't think it's worth 60$ (ps: it really really really isn't worth that much).

Lots of studios realize they'll be more successful at a lower price point, but not Ubisoft. This is not 1995 anymore.

 

[Treeinthewoods]

Well, it wasn't me that did it, it was the industry as a whole. How many absolutely fantastic (recent) platformers are there that are mind blowingly awesome? Comic Jumper, Splosion Man, Super Meat Boy, Braid... all amazing games, all for less than a regular retail game. The game developers have shown us that a 2D platformer can be fantastic for less money than a 3D FPS or similar AAA title, it's the price the market accepted and now views as standard.

Rayman Origins on PSN, XBL and Steam for $30 would have sold like hotcakes when the reviews hit.

Curse the market, curse the developers, don't curse the gamers for shifting perceptions of value.

So regardless of the game's quality, it should be sold for a budget price on the basis that it's a 2D platformer?

Yet again, let me emphasize this... you are correct. That's exactly what developers have told us for the last few years. A 2D platformer can be an amazing game for a fraction of the cost, so paying full price is not going to be perceived as worthwhile by todays average gamer.

 

[Treblaine]

I use photoshop and I work with artists who use photoshop and other digital aids, I see how quickly they can create work

The devs of Rayman: origins would NOT be foolish enough to draw on paper and scan rather than draw then direct in graphics suites, and I fact they use UbiArt graphics suite and boast ho they keep costs low.

Game Informer, Issue 218
http://ubi-art.uk.ubi.com/2010/06/14/about-the-things-we-use-in-ubiart-framework/

Again FIVE people animated this entire game. A likely impossible task for a 3D game unless it repeated a LOT of redundant elements or borrowed modified much from elsewhere.

As it looks like you didn't read much of my post I will clarify that I'm not talking about Rayman. I was talking about the fact that Hand drawn artists are much more and harder to come by than 3d artists. I don't know what Rayman did but I was pointing out that about hand drawn artists which from your post sounded like 3d artists were higher in level than hand drawn artists which is not true.

OK, maybe in general excluding factors of computer aids for "hand drawn" animation (how else would you draw even on a computer, with your foot?).

But Ubisoft SPECIFICALLY boasted how the animation aids they used for the development of Rayman Origins sped things up and made things easier. How they could in effect make the game in a far shorter time with only 5 people on full time animation.

And they want to still charge $60 for a game that was developed at far lower cost and far lower risk.

Even if the retailers cut the price down to $30 later that utterly screws the retailers as they bought each copy from the publisher for so much, THEY have to absorb the price cut and sell now while they can well at all.

And almost every animator is using computer aides these days to speed up their production while 3D animation is getting exponentially more complex and difficult. This isn't necessarily a good or bad thing, basically it means the effort needed to have made a comic book in the 1990's can now create a feature length animated movie. And the cost of 3D games has gone up exponentially, games like Red Dead Redemption or Bioshock justify the larger amount of money for the larger amount of content, and I'm not talking about "hours played" as you can put 200+ hours into an 8-bit card game (it's called Solitaire) I'm talking about of actual stuff. Characters, items, objects, buildings, vehicles, etc.

 

[Dr.Susse]

I've been waiting until I get a vita to buy it. Can't wait to play it though!

 

[pluggin]

On another topic, I think the reason why it hasn't had a Zero Punctuation Review, is that a much lager fan base would want reviews of games like MW3 and Battlefield and such other shooters that came out late last year. So the fact that rayman was released, as I feel, more or less in the middle of shooter season, didn't give it an edge in the market, and the chance of a new audience being captured was slightly diminished by that in terms of media exposure.

 

[Asuka Soryu]

Well, it wasn't me that did it, it was the industry as a whole. How many absolutely fantastic (recent) platformers are there that are mind blowingly awesome? Comic Jumper, Splosion Man, Super Meat Boy, Braid... all amazing games, all for less than a regular retail game. The game developers have shown us that a 2D platformer can be fantastic for less money than a 3D FPS or similar AAA title, it's the price the market accepted and now views as standard.

Rayman Origins on PSN, XBL and Steam for $30 would have sold like hotcakes when the reviews hit.

Curse the market, curse the developers, don't curse the gamers for shifting perceptions of value.

So regardless of the game's quality, it should be sold for a budget price on the basis that it's a 2D platformer?

Welcome to the world of competition. There's a reason why stores can go out of buisness trying to compete with a much larger store that does half the price of the small store.

No matter what you say or do, you can't argue that 60$ for a game in the same style as 15$ games isn't a bad idea. A greedy move and a joke. Wether 2D deserves to be as valuable as 3D is based on customers. Not companies, as Rayman Origins proved with its low sales.

To a customer, a 3D game with large full exploration is something more, it's expected to be 60$. A game that's 2D and is basically go from the left side of the screen to the right is considered to be 15$

It doesn't matter if you think it's worth 60$ It's the mass majority who'll truly decide its worth. As their sales is what'll make it a success or a failure.

What 3D gives is more depth. And to most customers, that justifies the price. It's something new, it's what they expect. 3DS games are 40$ Why shouldn't they be 60$? Because just like 2D, they're outdated. No one wants to pay full price for something from the past, that games have evolved beyond. It may be a small update in graphics, it may seem trivial that the 3D just promotes full view as its advantage, but it's something new, it's something we expect from these new end PC's and consoles.


In the end, Rayman's ultimate enemy was competition. Just because you liked it, doesn't mean that a person completely new to it is gone to see it and look past the fact that it's escentialy to the same thing as one guy selling a Hot Dog for 12$ next to a guy asking only 3$ for his hot dog. Maybe you think it's better quality, more healthy, tastes better, had more time put into it... but to someone else new to it and accustomed to 3$ hot dogs, you're asking an insane price and they're gone to go for the 3$ one in the end.


Lower price wins in the end. Why do you think used sales are so high? Because people are funny that way? No. Because they'd rather buy something for a lot less, if it means a small decrease in quality. And to most people, they didn't even notice any quality in Rayman that was gone to make it better then the typical 15$ 2D platformer.

Even more so now, when the economies in the trash can.

 

[Frybird]

This whole "as a 2D game, it should be cheap" debate just makes me want to scream in anger and once again proves that we, as gamers, deserve to see the industry collapsing in a mess of "safe" game productions.
I'm not saying anyone is supposed to love Rayman Origins (although i'd strongly argue that many would if they gave it a chance), but i'm still disappointed that the reasons to dismiss this game are petty and illogical for me (as they are in many "fresh" games over the years that were dismissed because they weren't quite "perfect" or because they were different)

On one hand we want games to be art, but on the other hand we still measure the worth of a game in graphics, or, to be more precise, in the kind of graphics the game uses? (or longlevity or technological fidelity, wich often comes off as equally stupid)

That's something to be ashamed about.

 

[General_Tragg]

Since the start of this console generation I've been wondering why no one has done a game like Rayman Origins, a game that feels like you're playing an animated cartoon. And Rayman does it, what really annoys me though, while I would like to cast my wallet vote as: "yes please more of this" I played the demo and I didn't like it. I like everything the game is doing, the evolution of the sprite game into the next gen as it were, I just don't like the game itself. But from what I hear Ubi are going to make the engine free to use so hopefully we'll see more of it's ilk on the horizon.

 

[Glademaster_v1legacy]

All I have to say here is Ubisoft. Bad marketing, bad PR, bad release time, bad almost everything.

 

[Frybird]

This whole "as a 2D game, it should be cheap" debate just makes me want to scream in anger and once again proves that we, as gamers, deserve to see the industry collapsing in a mess of "safe" game productions.
I'm not saying anyone is supposed to love Rayman Origins (although i'd strongly argue that many would if they gave it a chance), but i'm still disappointed that the reasons to dismiss this game are petty and illogical for me (as they are in many "fresh" games over the years that were dismissed because they weren't quite "perfect" or because they were different)

On one hand we want games to be art, but on the other hand we still measure the worth of a game in graphics, or, to be more precise, in the kind of graphics the game uses? (or longlevity or technological fidelity, wich often comes off as equally stupid)

That's something to be ashamed about.

Monetary value =/= Artistic value.

Go back and read the things people have been saying. No one is really deriding the game itself; it's the unreasonable cost to play the game in the first place that people are griping about.

But that, for me, is part of the problem.

I don't see how it's "unreasonable" at all...the game isn't short, has replay value, and looks very, VERY good.
I only see people coming up with excuses on how the game inherently isn't worth a full price on pure technical terms that barely influence the actual gameplay or pseudo-economical terms that does not concern us gamers at all (like the game being made by less than 10 people). And for added insult, Rayman gets frequently compared with games it just shouldn't be compared with, like Limbo, Splosion Man or Braid

And even if it would be short, if it's great, it's great.
What good is all the 3D and Open-Worldlyness of other games if you enjoy them less than you might enjoy this game? It's not like games (mostly) do have any other value than the Entertainment you get out of it.

Monetary value might not be the same as Artistic value, but game quality isn't defined in technical terms. (In fact, in this special case i say i prefer 2D Jump n Runs to 3D ones gameplay-wise every day, with only few exceptions). And saying the game is unreasonably priced (and as a side note, you can get the game easily cheaper than $60) does not seem to come from any valid points, but rather from the bias that this game is a 2D Jump n Run.

 

[Frybird]

This whole "as a 2D game, it should be cheap" debate just makes me want to scream in anger and once again proves that we, as gamers, deserve to see the industry collapsing in a mess of "safe" game productions.
I'm not saying anyone is supposed to love Rayman Origins (although i'd strongly argue that many would if they gave it a chance), but i'm still disappointed that the reasons to dismiss this game are petty and illogical for me (as they are in many "fresh" games over the years that were dismissed because they weren't quite "perfect" or because they were different)

On one hand we want games to be art, but on the other hand we still measure the worth of a game in graphics, or, to be more precise, in the kind of graphics the game uses? (or longlevity or technological fidelity, wich often comes off as equally stupid)

That's something to be ashamed about.

I mesure the "worth" of games by the competition. A 2d platformer nowadays for 60$ can only hold up against the competition if it is a godly sign imprinted onto the disc.

Again: We have games like Limbo, Trine 2 (and Trine) and a load more which are under 20$. Most of them last as long as Rayman Origins, have also an amazing artstyle and most of them are pretty innovative in terms of mechanics and theme.

So tell me, why should I defend bad pricing from Ubisoft? Because it all comes down to the fact that Ubisoft threw out a game in a field of competition with equals which cost about 1/3.

It's fair enough to measure games by competition

If you played Rayman Origins (demo or otherwise) and don't see how the game doesn't do anything for you that titles like Trine do, thats your personal taste.

However, i do see it differently. I don't know many other games that play and look as good as Rayman Origins. Limbo is MUCH shorter and simplistic, and i do actually prefer the look of Rayman to at least Trine 1.
And really, i don't think about how other games might be cheaper because i don't really see the point in arguing about that because that is something that especially nowadays is an incredibly complex thing.

You can get Full Games for the Price of an GTA IV Addon, yet both can be great. And i like how the $50 i payed for the game gave me a boxed, online-pass free copy that i can share with others.
And, most important of all, i liked the game and felt like it wasn't money badly spent.


So yeah, if you don't see the value in the game because there are similar games you like better for less money, that's fair enough.

My problem is to complain about prices being unreasonable simply because the game belongs to a specific genre and isn't powered by state of the art 3D engines.

 

[Soxafloppin]

I heard its very good, sadly I don't have the patients for 2D platformers but I respect this game so much, I have fond memories of Rayman.