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anvi

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anvi said:
Smart games are never going to be as big as the dumb mainstream ones, but at least they can be big enough to support themselves.

Really, all I'm looking for is a smart game with a strong element of escapism, not entirely based on constant murder. Hard ticket these days.
Like an Adventure Game? That genre is crying out for a reboot. Imagine the Gabriel Knight games, and Blade Runner, Syberia, Beneath a Steel Sky, Under a Killing Moon, Monkey Island, etc. but made in first person. Story and character based and puzzles and investigations and not much combat. I find it sad when I see people buying shit like Firewatch today because they crave a story, any story, even a bad one, when there used to be games with good stories but they are ignored now because they are 2d.

There has been some stuff like this before and I liked it. 7th Guest and some others. They just need to be made in a modern way and with better budget.
 
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c2007

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anvi said:
Smart games are never going to be as big as the dumb mainstream ones, but at least they can be big enough to support themselves.

Really, all I'm looking for is a smart game with a strong element of escapism, not entirely based on constant murder. Hard ticket these days.
Like an Adventure Game? That genre is crying out for a reboot. Imagine the Gabriel Knight games, and Blade Runner, Syberia, Beneath a Steel Sky, Under a Killing Moon, Monkey Island, etc. but made in first person. Story and character based and puzzles and investigations and not much combat. I find it sad when I see people buying shit like Firewatch today because they crave a story, any story, even a bad one, when there used to be games with good stories but they are ignored now because they are 2d.

There has been some stuff like this before and I liked it. 7th Guest and some others. They just need to be made in a modern way and with better budget.
Yes. Not exactly this for me, but pretty much yes.
 

ilitarist

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Like an Adventure Game? That genre is crying out for a reboot. Imagine the Gabriel Knight games, and Blade Runner, Syberia, Beneath a Steel Sky, Under a Killing Moon, Monkey Island, etc. but made in first person. Story and character based and puzzles and investigations and not much combat. I find it sad when I see people buying shit like Firewatch today because they crave a story, any story, even a bad one, when there used to be games with good stories but they are ignored now because they are 2d.

There has been some stuff like this before and I liked it. 7th Guest and some others. They just need to be made in a modern way and with better budget.

There are lots of games like that and people mostly do not care. The Vanishing of Ethan Carter, Observer, What Remains of Edith Finch, Obduction, Tesla Effect... Lots and lots of them. People buy them but they're not popular.
 

anvi

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I think that is only because people are sheep though. There are regular articles about stuff like Pillars of Eternity so people read about it when the game is first announced, read again when the kickstarter is a success, read again when there is some article about it in beta, and again when it is released, and then they will read someone talking about it on a forum and finally it sinks in, "I keep hearing about this game, people are playing it, I should check it out." That's how gaming works now. So people who want a game for story and atmosphere will buy something like that just because they think that's all there is. The Ethan Carter type games could be a lot more popular if they could catch on, and I am sure they eventually will. Firewatch did, and that is one of the worst pieces of shit I ever played. But somehow it went viral and sold a lot.
 

ilitarist

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No, it's because most people do not play games as a hobby, only occasionally.

Many people play mainstream games and say they're nostalgic about times of old hardcore games and wargames and stuff. Because back in 1996 you could have wargame on a PC games magazine cover. Nowadays you have wargames better than ever and many other genres have the best games ever. They aren't going to read lots of articles defining genres and such. They will google best RPG, see Witcher 3 or Pillars of Eternity or Divinity Original Sin 2 and they will be right in some sense because they wouldn't eat shit, they would play nice games with nice graphics and nice music and good gameplay. They won't play Might & Magic X Legacy which I adore even though it's shit in many regards - but they won't play Grimoire, Age of Decadence, Tides of Numenera, Inquisitor and many other games that look or play like shit, but took valuable time from my life. And if a random person asks me for a good game I'd rather give him Skyrim than the game I'd personally play.

(well I'd rather recommend Witcher 3 or Fallout New Vegas but Skyrim makes a better point)

Somewhere on car lover forums people laugh about your choice of car. Coffee forums despise your beverage of choice. Yada yada.
 

anvi

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But that's my point, people know what an RPG is and they know the names of them and they can find out which ones are worth playing. But they don't know what "What Remains of Edith Finch" is, or know anything about it, how to google it, and have probably never heard of it. In the 80s and part of the 90s, Adventure Games were as big as it got. Stuff like Monkey Island was as mainstream as Call of Duty is today. But it is basically dead today.
 

ilitarist

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Yes. I aggroed on "people are sheep" as in "but not me". We're all sheeps outside of our area of expertise. Deep knowledge of videogames may not be among the most honourable areas of expertise.
 
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c2007

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Yes. I aggroed on "people are sheep" as in "but not me". We're all sheeps outside of our area of expertise. Deep knowledge of videogames may not be among the most honourable areas of expertise.
:lol:
 

anvi

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Yes. I aggroed on "people are sheep" as in "but not me". We're all sheeps outside of our area of expertise. Deep knowledge of videogames may not be among the most honourable areas of expertise.
That is true but whether being a sheep is justifiable or not is another thing. The point is the mainstream is like a world of its own. Big budgets = big exposure on all the big sites = big audiences. Smaller games have a really hard time to get into that world. And sometimes they break through because they go viral for whatever reason. Usually they don't so they are stuck with 10,000 sales instead of 1m, but it isn't their fault.

Modern gaming is very closed minded and very catch 22. You get some really good games that have low budgets so they try to make a big game with lots of depth on a low budget and end up falling short on graphics, animations, UI, or whatever. And games like that get looked down upon by the mainstream gamer as being just gimpy indie shit. So it doesn't sell well, and then in the future, no financiers or publishers will want to put big money on a game like that because they say, "History shows it doesn't sell well." Then at the opposite end of the scale you get some dumb crap like Assassins Creed or CoD or whatever, they have a huge budget and they spend most of it on graphics, slickness, and hype building. It sells a billion copies and next year they will announce yet another sequel with an even bigger budget and even ubererer graphics. That is how gaming works and it is really bad.
 
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nihil

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Just give me a blank fucking map with some key locations written down like a real world map and let me annotate and add markers to it as I wish.

Also every quest and location should be designed as if the player lacked automap and quest compass.

That is a good idea, but it is also a surefire way to wreck your game's sales if it isn't highly niche.

The concept died with Origin Systems.

Zelda: Breath of the Wild basically does this. Proves you can do it in a mainstream game and be successful.

I think many developers just copy the established practices from other games, without thinking more deeply about it. I was hoping people would start copying (that aspect of) Zelda now, but it hasn't seemed to happen yet. I read Assassin's Creed: Odyssey has an "exploration mode", but I don't know how it is.
 

Viata

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I read Assassin's Creed: Odyssey has an "exploration mode", but I don't know how it is.
Apparently, the exploration mode is the way you should play the game, as it was designed for that:
Gt2V09X.png
 

nihil

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"A newer approach to playstyle." :lol: I suppose they mean in terms of Assassin's Creed, but that was still funny.
 

Big Wrangle

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But hey, it's the way meant to be played. It's a step.
 

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