Paradox Interactive RPG Survey

[Coma White]

Think about that though... A changed audience begets a change by the industry [all industries; and film & games both]. Can you imagine 12 Angry Men done in 2017? Just look at the recent Ben Hur remake.

Yes, but that's not what you said before. You made the implication Lawrence of Arabia wasn't filmed in order to pander to audience expectation. Which just isn't true -- the audience can and does change, but products (whether artistic or otherwise) are consistently designed with consumption in mind. The idea that media sold for mass consumption (as opposed to individual commission, which is another matter), whether films or games or whatever, was ever at any point produced sans audience expectations or desires is a common fallacy.

 

[Beastro]

In before vampire feminism and a mostly black cast.

No thx, not an Anarch fan~

 

[Xathrodox86]

My top preferences for a new masquerade game would be:

1. First person
2. Real time combat
3. Single protagonist instead of party
4. Open world
5. Hardcore survival mechanics, including sunlight, hunger, hunting, etc

Don't forget crafting, mining, base building, romances and integration with facebook.

Jokes aside, most of his points are valid. I wouldn't do an open world game, since they're mostly shite. Also hunting and hunger are cool, but no sunlight in my VTM game please. Redemption did that already and it sucked.

 

[Glop_dweller]

You made the implication Lawrence of Arabia wasn't filmed in order to pander to audience expectation.

Not intentionally then. I certainly didn't consider it part of the message; rather, the message was that the cultural mindset of the time was capable of following and appreciating such a film, and the fact is that ~now, I don't think that most are, and I know we won't be seeing its like anytime soon, or like Ben Hur, or Dances with Wolves, or... actually I can't think of a more recent one to add, can you? If they made them, they won't come ~to turn the phrase. We live in a Twitter world with a 140 character mindset. I have been told in conversation that books cannot measure up to movies, because they are words, and they just sit there; where as movies have action and sounds.... and so I think the majority is the Micheal Bay audience, and that making movies for them ~specifically, is the all too tempting path to a blockbuster.
But also, the more insidious side of it might be the message (hitting home) that they don't need to offer any more than that; it will sell just as well...and arguably better without. If so, then that's a very bad harbinger for the games and movies to come.

Games-wise I think it's the same. There are fantastic niche games, but very, very few seem to enjoy AAA success, because no one will risk a AAA budget on anything niche or risky. (Risky meaning in depth or complex; risky meaning not like Call of Duty, Halo, or an FPP McRPG.)
*Sadly even CDProjekt, (a company I had high hopes about), has sand-blasted, and chiipped away at their Witcher series, not entirely unlike Bethesda has done with TES. I barely recognize the games anymore, and they [both] have long since stripped out what had originally interested me in those two series. A sign of the times I guess ~bad times, and worse to come.

The idea that media sold for mass consumption (as opposed to individual commission, which is another matter), whether films or games or whatever, was ever at any point produced sans audience expectations or desires is a common fallacy.

I don't think so, and would argue that the first film had no audience expectation at all; and I would say the same for video games. IE. the pre-clone of missile command on an oscilloscope; and later Pong. Have you not seen the many posts [these days] that discount all games prior to MCGA graphics as unplayable, by people that likely don't know what MCGA graphics are (or VGA for that matter). I do believe that there is similar sentiment among the majority audience for films that lack the pacing of a reality TV show, or the latest Fast and the Furious sequel.

 

[Bester]

If you want inadequate pacing, just watch art house.

Lawrence was tediously slow. From the same period, a lot of movies had a much more adequate pacing, e.g. Yojimbo, 12 Angry Men, Dr. Strangelove, In the Heat of the Night, etc. And mere 9 years after Lawrence, you already had movies with almost modern pacing like the French Connection, Cassidy and Sundance, Godfather, etc. Do you call them shit too? Please.

 

[Coma White]

Not intentionally then. I certainly didn't consider it part of the message; rather, the message was that the cultural mindset of the time was capable of following and appreciating such a film, and the fact is that ~now, I don't think that most are, and I know we won't be seeing its like anytime soon, or like Ben Hur, or Dances with Wolves, or... actually I can't think of a more recent one to add, can you? If they made them, they won't come ~to turn the phrase. We live in a Twitter world with a 140 character mindset. I have been told in conversation that books cannot measure up to movies, because they are words, and they just sit there; where as movies have action and sounds.... and so I think the majority is the Micheal Bay audience, and that making movies for them ~specifically, is the all too tempting path to a blockbuster.
But also, the more insidious side of it might be the message (hitting home) that they don't need to offer any more than that; it will sell just as well...and arguably better without. If so, then that's a very bad harbinger for the games and movies to come.

Games-wise I think it's the same. There are fantastic niche games, but very, very few seem to enjoy AAA success, because no one will risk a AAA budget on anything niche or risky. (Risky meaning in depth or complex; risky meaning not like Call of Duty, Halo, or an FPP McRPG.)
*Sadly even CDProjekt, (a company I had high hopes about), has sand-blasted, and chiipped away at their Witcher series, not entirely unlike Bethesda has done with TES. I barely recognize the games anymore, and they [both] have long since stripped out what had originally interested me in those two series. A sign of the times I guess ~bad times, and worse to come.


I don't think so, and would argue that the first film had no audience expectation at all; and I would say the same for video games. IE. the pre-clone of missile command on an oscilloscope; and later Pong. Have you not seen the many posts [these days] that discount all games prior to MCGA graphics as unplayable, by people that likely don't know what MCGA graphics are (or VGA for that matter). I do believe that there is similar sentiment among the majority audience for films that lack the pacing of a reality TV show, or the latest Fast and the Furious sequel.

I like your reply enough to agree to disagree. Let's be friends.

 

[Coma White]

Lawrence was tediously slow.

 

[Glop_dweller]

I like your reply enough to agree to disagree. Let's be friends.

Lawrence was tediously slow. From the same period, a lot of movies had a much more adequate pacing, e.g. Yojimbo, 12 Angry Men, Dr. Strangelove, In the Heat of the Night, etc. And mere 9 years after Lawrence, you already had movies with almost modern pacing like the French Connection, Cassidy and Sundance, Godfather, etc. Do you call them shit too? Please.

I believe you may have missed the gist; and [of course], I think each and every one of those films is [unassailably] superb... and that's why you've picked them as your examples.

It is interesting to me though, that you mention 12 Angry Men (and did so after I had in the post above), I watched the 1997 remake of 12 Angry Men yesterday afternoon. The pacing is close to the original, and it has a powerhouse cast; no less than the original [IMO]. Obviously they would not cast Jack Klugman to reprise his roll as juror #5; not with Jack Lemmon being juror #8 ~that would have been odd indeed. But I did notice that they rewrote the part of juror #10 to prominently be a black Muslim... and my impression of that was that they did it literally just to get away with espousing the dialog of the part to a 90's audience... Strangely politically correct. (A change to accommodate the audience of the day?)

I wonder [again] if 12 Angry Men could even possibly be released unexpurgated in or after 2016, to a modern audience; and/or just how badly they would mangle it today if they did, in attempt to navigate the SJW minefield; while trying not to bore the hell out of an audience that needs an explosive light-show, cruelly public put-downs, and/or behind the back betrayals to stay interested.

 

[Jaesun]

It's just that Zenithesda isn't really talented, to the point that they can't even copy what Obsidian did. The whole RPG system is non-existent, the writing is awful, and they're still using this Gamebryo engine from 00s.

And yet they still continue to make millions and millions of dollars.

 

[Latelistener]

It's just that Zenithesda isn't really talented, to the point that they can't even copy what Obsidian did. The whole RPG system is non-existent, the writing is awful, and they're still using this Gamebryo engine from 00s.

And yet they still continue to make millions and millions of dollars.

"Most people would rather die than think; many do."

 

[Glop_dweller]

It's just that Zenithesda isn't really talented, to the point that they can't even copy what Obsidian did. The whole RPG system is non-existent, the writing is awful, and they're still using this Gamebryo engine from 00s.

And yet they still continue to make millions and millions of dollars.

Has no bearing on quality though.

Its a sick (and over-used) point, but sadly apt...that McDonalds continues to make millions and millions of dollars too; along with Taco Bell. (And I would say for not very dissimilar reasons.)

*People bought at least 2.5 million copies of Goat Simulator didn't they?
________________
**Post addendum:

Is it not so that NV got flak for some of the very things it does right?

No. It was criticized for bugs, and no one gave a rat's ass about the fact that it was Zenithesda who handled QA, and decided to release it in the state it was.

It was also criticized for having areas of a desolate wasteland that were ~a desolate wasteland; unlike FO3, where the whole of the Earth seemed to wait with bated breath for the arrival of the new chosen one... the one who in the dev's mind, has paid for a ticket to a theme park; (with interactive assailants and distractions over every other hill, and loot stuffed in almost everything that might hold it)... Like medical supplies inexplicably still inside a seemingly untouched first aid locker, in a house just of of an obvious road ~for centuries, as if no one else had ever thought to look in there for salvage.

I read many many posts trying their damnedest to lambaste NV for not measuring up to FO3's level of servility towards the player... But I remember in Fallout, the simple detail that most containers in a populated area were empty ~long since looted by the generations that preceded the PC in their desperate existence. Places that did have untouched loot in containers, were [almost as a rule], in someone's active business or residence, or in places so isolated (or so lethal) that no looters had found it, or had survived trying to take it. A fundamental difference between Bethesda's FO, and all of the others; Bethesda was making a digital theme-park interpretive setting... not unlike what's seen in the movie West World, as opposed to making an extrapolated post apocalyptic Fallout world based on the setting's precepts.

... And with that, I think I need to make an account and take the Paradox RPG survey.
Do they have any questions about the nature of RPGs?