Chade on 1/9/2010 at 22:01
Quote Posted by Koki
Uh, no? If Thief was a "major hit" with 500k copies, what would Quake 2 with one million be? And people didn't even care about Q2 all that much, really. As soon as new online FPS was done they dropped it, it never had the staying power that, say, Tribes did.
The Quake series, including Quake 2, is one of the most successful series ever made. According to Wikipedia: "Quake II was the most popular online game for all of 1998".
On the other hand, Tribes sold less then Thief. According to Wikipedia: "Starsiege: Tribes sold a total of 210,000 copies ... Tribes 2 sold a total of 400,000 copies".
Quote Posted by Brethren
And his attempts to convince us that the same innovation and creativity he showed earlier in his career can be applied to what he's doing now, quite frankly, ring hollow.
What attempts? The interviewer was too wrapped up in glorifying LGS to follow up on that, which was disappointing, because I imagine Paul thoughts on the subject would be a lot more interesting then hearing the interviewer repeat the same set of slogans we regurgitate every day on TTLG.
Quote Posted by d'Spair
It IS killing. In Russia, almost every single studio that was working on hardcore SP games 10 years ago is now working with casual audience or online games. I think this trend is happening all around the world. The 'hardcore/mainstream' relation has changed during the last few years. 10 years ago, Thief was hardcore and Doom was mainstream. Now, Call of Duty is hardcore and FarmVille is mainstream.
Casual gaming is growing as hardcore gaming is becoming less hardcore ... but this does not mean that casual gaming is killing hardcore gaming. It could be the other way around (which is actually more likely: game designers jumping into casual games as it becomes harder to make money the traditional way), or the two phenomena could be unrelated.
Mainstream hardcore gaming has always been powered by games getting "better" every year ... better graphics, better sound, better AI ,etc ... this type of "hardcore gaming" is inherently unsustainable unless the hardcore audience grows faster then the cost of getting "better".
Hardcore gaming would have become less hardcore no matter what happened in the casual gaming world.
Sulphur on 1/9/2010 at 22:16
Quote Posted by Chade
this type of "hardcore gaming" is inherently unsustainable unless the hardcore audience grows faster then the cost of getting "better".
Truest thing I've heard today.
We've got to allow for the fact that this generation looks like it's a) dictated by the consoles and b) ready to be more drawn out than the last one.
I guess we're headed for a plateau, or at least a slow-down, because the average cost of development for a current-gen game vs. average sales seems unlikely to sustain the breakneck pace of the past.
gunsmoke on 2/9/2010 at 00:11
Quote Posted by ZylonBane
Yeah, apparently some of the Thief team originally didn't even want to include mouselook.
Hah, some of those loots require precision down to the pixel...imagine that with DooM controls (no mouselook(...
d'Spair on 2/9/2010 at 09:09
Doom had mouselook. Even Wolf 3D did.
Morgoth on 2/9/2010 at 10:03
A fucking shame Floodgate only makes Hello Kitty games these days.
gunsmoke on 2/9/2010 at 10:24
Quote Posted by d'Spair
Doom had mouselook. Even Wolf 3D did.
I meant vertical, I left it out on accident.
Harvester on 2/9/2010 at 11:53
Doom's mouselook was really annoying to use, because the Y-axis made you run forwards or backwards instead of look vertical. I understand vertical looking and aiming wasn't technically feasible back then, but the Y-axis doing nothing at all would have been preferable to running forwards/backwards, in my opinion.
gunsmoke on 2/9/2010 at 13:30
Yeah, that fucked with me so hard. Some other annoying mouse controls: Right click to jump or hold Right mouse button to run forward.
Satrapper on 2/9/2010 at 15:57
There was a way to turn Y-movement off. Not in the game menu, though.
Brian The Dog on 2/9/2010 at 16:31
Quote Posted by d'Spair
PC gaming IS dead in its traditional state. PC gaming has been known for ages as the platform for game design innovation, immersive games and rich single-player experience. Looking Glass was a PCgames studio. Bethesda was formed as a PC games studio. Current immersive games that are being enjoyed all around TTLG (Stalker, BioShock - well, almost all around TTLG in case with this one, - Dark Messiah) are either PC only or multiplatform, but originated from PC games design concepts.
PC gaming now is MMO games like WOW and casual/social games now. Hardcore SP games are console games these days.
The obvious outlier to this is the Total War series, which is PC-only and sells by the bucket-loads. Although you could quite easily argue that they left innovation behind after "Rome", since the later games just include fancier graphics and ship battles, with no real new gameplay. Similarly, Civilization is a big-seller on PC, although I don't know if that's PC only.
