* 1. Art style (for example Anime)
I remember when stuff like Akira and Fist of the North Star came to California and wasn't mainstream, I liked it. It reminded me at the time of stuff like my teenage years with Heavy Metal magazine and off-beat violent sci-fi. It was fun and shocking. But when you mix it up with Disney characters and kids, it doesn't have the same impact. I'm sure there are some good games under those layers but it's really a turn off now. To me it looks like you're marketing to children, not even teenagers. My Little Pony is what I see for stuff like that. And that's fine.
2. Turn based combat
My parents bought me the first D&D rule book as well as a stereo back in the seventies, so I'm okay with Stratego, Monopoply and RPG's.
3. Real Time combat
I got an Intellevision and we got stoned and played many, many hours of baseball on that thing. I'm okay with it.
4. First Person View only
Of course I had played Apogee games before, but Catacombs was something else. When Doom came out, the shit hit the fan, I'll love FPS forever.
5. Third Person View only
This is a difficult one, much of my life is a blur as I'm sure many of you here understand from personal experience but the two the stick out in my mind, although much later (I'm sure) than other 3rd person games is the first Tomb Raider and those dinosaurs. Then (with a wheel on a 486 no less) Interstate '76. I spent many hours on both of them.
6. Exsessive DRM (like constant internet connection for a SP game)
This is a good one. Back then I was working on of the earlier retail computer shops on the planet and we would pirate every game that came in, from Temple of Apshie to Bards Tale, Phygnosis games, Death Sword, everything, for both the Atari ST and Amiga. We'd unwrap the game, hack the disks then re-shrink wrap the box. For tons of stuff. PC's only existed as spreadsheet machines back then, they didn't compare. Amiga were slightly better from a technical viewpoint but Atari ST's were a bit cheaper and better bang for your buck. When Sundog came out we were absorbed, when Dungeon Master by FTL was released on the Atari ST, Tramiel must have made millions. We all bought the game and spent weeks comparing graph paper notes. There was no internet back then, just BBS's. Whatever, it was really the 'golden age' for me.
But back to pirating, I buy most of my stuff but almost always crack it all. I can't be bothered with the hassle to my system. That's just me, I'm mostly honest. Like others, I won't tolerate always on for a single player game. Fuck it, don't want to talk about it.
7. Game is made by BioWare
This is actually easy and embarrasing. One of my first posts here was asking about RTwP. I was playing BG2 and had some questions and I didn't understand the terminology everyone was using. Someone explained to me what it meant. Anyways, I really liked BG2 for many reasons mostly because my DM's allways killed us off at around level 8, maybe nine. So, even though I'd played PnP D&D for many years I'd never played a high level character. It was chaotic and fun. I still will say that I liked BG2 and think it was super fun. (I always play as a wizard).
The problem is, is that I eventually got KoTR and I saw the opening for the first Starwars movie in Dallas in '77 or whenever it was. But being an FPS person, I was suddenly in some weird 3rd person world, where the controls didn't work, the inventory was fucked yet I had a good time for most of the ride. I'll admit I enjoyed it enough, I played the 'light' side. It was the last Bio game that I ever played. And I never finished it, I made it right up to the last planet am probably soon to go get all those stargate pieces together and I couldn't drag myself through it. I was so bored and overpowered and couldn't stand to look into another chest for loot let alone my inventory.
Then I tried NWN. Twice. The OC sucked I never made it out of the four quadrant city on either run. I was just bored. The strange thing is that I ended up playing all of their 'DLC'. I think they called them Premium Packs or maybe even the old school term, 'expansion packs'. I liked them all, Hords of the Under Dark, Dagger something and mostly, a shit tonne of user made stuff. Then I got into making my own but that didn't pan out well, I'm a techie, not a designer.
Since then, as I've explained before, my dad got an uber computer (he's a retired IT guy in his sixties), built a machine that matches what most of you have today and bought a whole bunch of shit including Metro, Batman, and ME1 (or was it two?). So I'm visiting him and he's showing off his super uber machine (and it is 120hz 3d monitors, dual card Nvidias, quad core, the works) and is asking me how to get into this door. I'm like, is this Mass Effect? Anyways, he has like six computers in there and my mom has one too, and she's playing bejeweled (that's her speed if she's not playing Plants on the iPad) and looks over and says: 'That's Frogger in a circle". So I got my dad through the mini-game to get him through the door and that was the end of that. Who the fuck does that? Frogger to open a door in an RPG? He's a big sci-fi nut but whatever. Two lost sales.
* 8. Game is made by Bethesda
My first experience with them, being a techie support guy was getting this thing (Daggerfall) to run on DOS. I was really good at it at the time but my friends weren't. To be honest I spent way more time on a few of my DnD buddies' computers trying to get it to work than I ever played it. I remember getting a lot of phone calls and trying different drivers and getting memory to run as tight as possible, that stuff. It was a pain.
I did play it but I remember being disappointed, getting my ass kicked in a dungeon and thinking it certainly wasn't dungeon master.
My only two other experiences with Bethseda are almost identical to each other (not DOS). Both games had been released for almost two years, I researched all the mods, I installed the mods (hoping to make a good game play experience) and got bored. For example, after fifteen hours of thinking, this will probably be shit, I bought Oblivioun, installed OOO and some interface thing, played for about ten hours and got bored. I didn't hate it, I just couldn't keep going. It was boring. Maybe it's my FPS background, maybe my RPG background but it was dull. I can still see the goblin over the hill, I was supposed to go to the witches house and I just... didn't... care.
But I paid for Oblvion two years after the fact, knew better and did it anyways. Nothing can help it.
I ignored F3 but did 'demo' New Vegas for maybe 20 hours, it was good, I didn't have any bugs and usually don't yet they said they were coming out with DLC and fixing broken quests. I didn't know about any broken quests but how could I? Anyways, it sounded like a cash grap and sure enough they kept pumping out the rest of the game. I heard their going to produce the finished version later this year? That's the thing, wait a year these days, maybe you'lll get at complete product. I'm in no rush.
9. Others (please state)
THE MODERN TREND OF INTERFACES
It's bad. I'm thinking of Fable, I finally made it through a few hours of that. It was the size of four postage stamps glued together. With a little scroll bar (did it work?). I didn't know that I'd died fifteen times and was automatically ressurecting myself because I didn't realize how much loot I had. But that's just a stupid shit game.
How about, Gothic 2? Yeah, keyboard only, but at least you knew what was going on, could navigate and it actually worked with an unlimited inventory. How about Pip Boy in New Vegas? What's up with that? Yes, I got good at it, but why the fuck am I scrolling through all of that tiny shit and tabbing between everything.
Dungeon Master did it better a few decades ago. In the late ninties they were writing books on GUI design. Before Windows or Xbox existed there were courses on how to make intuitive interfaces. Why does this go out the door in 2011?
Bad interface is wrong. Whatever your application is, game, spreadsheet, wall street monitoring software, hacking programs, data recovery programs, or even, entertainment. Nevermind.
Anyways, those are my votes and why I voted that way.
