Xcom Publisher: Strategy Games Are Not Contemporary

[The_root_of_all_evil]

The last (one or two) X-Com games were 3rd person space marine 'crap' in most peoples opinions.

You're wrong. You're also arguing about something you have no interest in for the sake of arguing. Please stop it.

The penultimate X-Com game was a TBS that also had Real Time Strategy. It was called X-Com: Apocalypse.
The last X-Com game was a space strategy game called X-Com: Interceptor.

After Hasbro bought the line, they re-started it with X-Com: Enforcer - which was a crappy Quake Clone, and X-Com: Email, which was...A TBS. Neither are considered part of the main canon as they haven't been released together - or within the canon storyline.

XCOM actually retcons the entirety of the series, therefore isn't part of it. And it's Americentric AGAIN.

As has been said, there are many different names "Zombies Ate My Neighbours 2" which would have made more sense to licence, but this is a shallow eyed cash-in by people who don't know or care about the licence.

Strategy isn't Contemporary, my ass.

 

[ciasteczkowyp]

x-com as a shooter?

meh

<goes back to ufo: enemy unknown on dosbox>

 

[Jandau]

Oh... my... god.

This has got to be the dumbest thing I've heard all day. Not "contemporary"? Really? So that's why every Total War game sells like crazy? That's why the last Civilization game was a total sucess? Yeah, nobody plays strategy games anymore, bro, it's, like, all about shooters now, herp -a-derp-a-derp! Not like any major company is raking it in with any kind of strategy game, real time or turn based. Surely not one named after a type of snowstorm...

To use his music analogy, should we only make/listen to music that is on the current MTV top chart? Because that's what's "popular"? Should we stop making metal, rock, etc. just because some other genre sells slightly better? And as for the whole "Why do you care if it's not a strategy game anymore?" - let's stick with the music analogy again. Take your favourite band. Now take your least favourite contemporary music genre. Now imagine if your favourite band declared it will now be making music in your least favourite genre. That's kinda like how this is...

 

[HellenicWarrior]

I want to punch this guy in the neck. 2K is just 2Lazy to either slightly adapt an engine or remain faithful to the franchise.

 

[SkyKitty]

If I can't name my agents, I'm not even giving this a chance.

I want George bush to team up with Gordon Freeman to defeat the alien...Tar...Menace.

Also...

Spoiler: Yes, because no strategy game sells at all now adays.

Add Frozen Synapses to that. And very soon, Subversion.

Fixed in original post, forgot about that one.

Heh heh.

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I had to fight terrible temptations to not include Nexus: The Jupiter Incident and Homeworld in there. I gathered they wouldn't be contemporary enough.

You included Sins of a Solar Empire.

IloveyouIloveyouIloveyouIloveyou

 

[JediMB]

Let's turn all franchises into first-person shooters!

Captcha (appropriate): oh, lord

 

[sniddy_v1legacy]

To sum this up

X com fans want a new strategy game - a reboot is fine - I just want my squads, aliens a desperate struggle and a tech tree.

The shooter market want CoD 5, battlefield 6, Halo 7, whatever they won't look twice at your crappy cash in....unless it rocks as a shooter BUT

You wanna shoehorn in the X-com fans with a smidge of anything tactical, technical or in depth

You loose a large chunk of the shooter market as it's not a multiplayer utopia blast and be damned with optimal un-lockable extras - and xcom fans arn't really looking for a shooter with a weak 'faux' strategy bit bolted on as an appeaser

So you have a mangled mess of a game trying to drag two separate groups in and alienating both in the process....

Congratulations, you fail market research forever, it is not....'duhhh - what sell well last week, we make more!' And end up in competition with much larger well established and loved brands but 'Where is the gap in the market, something I can get in make my own and establish - how can I use what I've got to succeed?' which should lead you to, few turn based games, none really action based, large fan base....who are now in late 20's with money and getting the whole fond memories thing.

The only question you need to answer is 'would a turn based action game work' jsut saying it's not contemporary so no without looking at the possibility smacks of stupidly and laziness both of which are poor traits in anyone making games.

So as much as I want this to work and be a good game and all that - I fear the worst

 

[infohippie]

Also, funny how an international consortium is now solely an American institution.

I find it odd how 2K seem to have this obsession with America in the fifties. I mean, Bioshock did the fifties Americana thing well (despite being at the bottom of the ocean) and Bioshock Infinite looks like it'll be doing similar, but more so and in a different setting. Perhaps their board of directors is composed entirely of nostalgic senior citizens?

 

[notmyday2009]

I felt the fans of these series were overacting to these new game and that they were all just being way to angry because of a few changes. That was until I read this from TV trope.

An FPS reboot of the series has been announced, being developed by 2k Marin, the team behind Bioshock 2. So far, the fanbase has reacted in a manner predictable to everyone except, apparently, 2K games, even going so far as to dub it things like "XenoShock" and "XINO" ("X-Com In Name Only"). This seems to be due to a combination of the bitter taste left behind by Enforcer and an understandable lack of enthusiasm for the direction the developers seem to be taking the game (with changes such as the wholesale dumping of the previous games' canon, X-COM being a division of the DoD as opposed to a Multinational Team, the focus era being shifted to a "Pleasantville" version of the sixties and the move from cerebral turn based strategy to the Cover Shooter gameplay seen in the trailer).

That and read and watch more how the other games were and I most say that there rage is justified. They really have rape this series by making an alien invasion game and putting the name X-COM in the title and calling it a reboot. I was gonna say since I was never a fan of this series(Or ever heard of this series before this game was announced) I might give it a try if it get OK review but then this was made by the same people that made the unnecessary sequel Bio shock 2 so fuck these game. Also the people making this game most be the dumbest ************ to not have expected this kind of hatred from the fan base and saying strategy game are from a by gone are really showcase there stupidity. That and they gain nothing by putting these game the X-COM title when no first person shooter fan has no clue about these series. The series is well know to old PC gamer and they sure as hell are not gonna give a fuck about these game.

 

[Roserari]

Reading between the lines I managed to put this together: "Yeah, we're making this a shooter because that's what's going to get us the most sold copies. Money, you see, is far more important than a few, ancient old gamers that still live in their mom's basement."

 

[Iron Lightning]

Wow, I never thought anyone could rape an intellectual property more than George Lucas, but these guys seem to have done it.

You know what, I'm going to go one step further. This game is going to rape the original X-com more than Highlander 2: The Quickening raped the original Highlander.

Now that is a colossal feat and we should congratulate these people for their dedication to completely defiling arguably the best strategy game of all time. My friends, these people do not have good intentions. They are intellectual rapists of the highest caliber.

 

[Quanta Starfire]

It's times like this that make me glad I stick to fighting games. I'm certainly not a "strategy" kind of guy (not in the context of this thread, in any case, which is why I'm not fond of the gameplay - and only the gameplay - in Dragon Age: Origins), and I barely know how to spell the original Xcom (as I've just heard of it recently), so this tidbit or news doesn't bother me in the slightest.

Street Fighter is now a JRPG. Are you okay with this?

 

[Jake Martinez]

Alright, so I am a pretty big x-com fan. While I was willing to "give this game a chance" even though it has a tenuous (at best) link to the original franchise, now I am firmly in the "fuck off and die" camp.

I'm actually sending an email to take two (2k's parent company) about this, and about how Mr. Hartmann is an obvious tool and unworthy to be the President of Hair Club for men, let alone a major software game publisher.

Seriously... they won't get my money anymore. Especially considering how much they excell at mediocrity.

 

[FieryTrainwreck]

What a twit.

Escalating financial pressure has turned video game development from "me too" into "try something different and I'll kill your family".

 

[RedEyesBlackGamer]

I didn't even play the old games but one word came to mind while reading his response:
[HEADING=1]BULLSHIT[/HEADING]
He is trying to justify the radical change and it ain't working. And insulting Ray Charles while he is at it? Fuck off. Seriously, this has to be one of the weakest PR responses that I've ever seen.

 

[OldNewNewOld]

I think it's because shooters are a gazillion times easier to make than a good, balanced and challenging strategy game.

 

[tkioz]

I could have handled the game as a shooter, I really could have, if the setting had been true to the series.

What really drew me into the first X-Com game that still has me playing it off and on almost 20 years later was the idea that I was fighting a shadow war across the entire planet in a near future, with the very existence of humanity at stake, slowing gaining ground against the alien invaders, turning their own weapons against them (something you had to do, because the best human weapons only grazed them), no matter the extreme casualty rates you would take (any modern military would scream at missions that would routinely see 50-75% casualties, and that was common in X-Com), you were making them suffer worse, until finally you took the fight to them.

The fact this XCom was a shooter was really immaterial to me, it was the fact it was a Bioshock cash-in that turned me off. Aliens in the 1950s? Really? Photos as research? Really? Fighting with 50s ear firearms against a race that has mastered the speed of light? Really?

Oh and on the topic of strategy not being what gamers what? WTF? Civ5, Dawn of War, and a number of other games are still realitively new, and last I checked they were strategy games and doing just fine.

Sorry, the reason the game failed wasn't it was a shooter, it was because it sucked and was a blatant cash grab based on the name of a once great series.

 

[Tanki]

I just want to point out something that should be obvious.

The guy said turn-based strategy is old and outdated.

So... could you please stop name dropping Starcraft 2 like it's in any way relevant to the conversation? Not to disrespect that game at all... but it's not a shining example of turn based anything.

Tho yes, obvious betrayal of XCom is obvious. But keep your points relevant to what is said, lest you look like a bunch of Fandumb that doesn't know how to read and only has the attention span of first-person shooter fans.

Which is kinda what you're trying to not look like, amirite?

The title reads strategy. And he also states strategy, not turn based strategy.

"Turn-based strategy games were no longer the hottest thing on planet Earth," Hartmann said. "But this is not just a commercial thing - strategy games are just not contemporary."

ORLY?


You know, when I was in school, I was taught something about reading comprehension. That being... reading the title of an article, book, newspaper editorial, whatever, is not the same thing as reading the article itself.

It does not matter what the headline is. It matters what the story is.


And I agree with StriderShiryu... Valkyria Chronicles is actually a great way to do a modern X-com. It's cheaper to make, and ValChron shows there's a healthy demand for a strategy franchise similiar to X-com.

Did you read the sentence next to the line you bolded out?
If you continued reading then you could have easily seen that he is openly attacking the strategy genre. I think you need to brush up your comprehension skills instead of being a hypocrite.

:facepalm:

Obvious antecedent is obvious. When someone states 'turn-based strategy' in one sentence, it's assumed that use of 'strategy' in the subsequent sentences about the exact same topic are referring to the exact same thing. At no point did he state the entire strategy megagenre. He did not make any attempt to infer the entire strategy genre. All he did was abbreviate 'turn-based strategy' into 'strategy'.

It's called synecdoche where part of something is used to refer to the entirety of something... much like how we say 'Boston won the Stanley Cup' and mean 'Boston Bruins won the Stanley Cup.' Or 'I see sails over the horizon!' when one means they are seeing ships. Context shows it's obvious what he means.

Defend X-com, but don't misrepresent what he clearly meant and DID, in fact, say. Taking things out of context just so you can namedrop RTSs doesn't help the case for Turn-based anyways.

Just ignore DracoSuave he's trolling. He completely disregards the inference of the statement, everyone else can read it just fine. Also ignore Sober Thal it's obvious he has never played X-Com and doesn't care for it.