No, it’s ok: I’ll let casual mainstream gamers decide what I should play instead. After all, the fate of the games industry rests in their hands – not mine.
Also, developers like Cyan and Treasure who simply love making games have no place in the games industry since they like to make games that are unheard of for hardcore gamers who don’t really matter anymore.
Meanwhile, large companies like EA can and should consume smaller developers like Westwood Studios who made highly successful games on their own through sheer innovation, and fire their founders, because any developer who wants to make the games it actually wants to make as opposed to the games every casual gamer wants and dreams of doesn’t belong in this industry where if it were possible, developers would print money instead of games.
Actually only making “me too” games and inferior sequels will end up hurting the industry someday, but this danger is less visible than a game that doesn’t sell very well, so shareholders will not be so afraid of it until it gets them. The smart ones will sell theirs first and when the others caught up what’s happening a selling stomp will begin. Many medium and small publishers will dissapear this way…
Bleh, console gaming is doomed to be less and less interesting. I’ll stick to my PC.
Me too. I almost can’t wait for Dragon Age, Fallout 3 and Neverwinter Nights 2 to arrive. The great thing about PC games is that they are generally tailored for more mature gamers.
As for the current state of the games industry, I basically share the same sentiments as Capcom’s Noritaka Funamizu: bringing games to the masses and turning games into an everyday form of general entertainment in the same vein as movies was the best and worst thing that ever could’ve happened to them.
[quote=“SegaTecToy”]Bleh, console gaming is doomed to be less and less interesting. I’ll stick to my PC.
One word: mods. ;)[/quote]
The PC market suffers from the same situation, you get a few “gems” that are worth purchasing and then you have a ton of average “me too” FPS, RTS, MMORPG, whatever games.
Mods are also falling to the same cycle nowadays since most (if not all) of the good quality mods are done as portofolio pieces and it’s natural that making a massively popular Counter Strike clone or WW2 themed game is bound to attract a potential employer’s attention more than a unique game that will barely be played online. There’s always exceptions (like Metaball which I’ve been trying to promote in another thread) but the “rule” is the same. Me too, me too, me too.
Or maybe he’s saying that these things have to also be taken in account so you can’t expect too much from a company that barely survived “death” multiple times? Sega WILL make innovative games at some point, you just can’t expect every game they make to be that from now on. He just gave you more detail into how things work rather than let you go all “Blah you do it just for money bitchy Sega :’( I don’t love you anymore” as usual.
WTF? Explain? And atleast keep it consistent? At one thread you are all optimistic hoping that the changes will be good and not something bad for the series and now you act as if you just KNOW it’s gonna suck. Maybe keep one opinion about the matter and from then on wait and see how things turn out rather than change opinion and present the matter differently depending on a current discussion you’d like to use it in.
I see you haven’t been keeping up to date with the latest news on the new Shining Force. The game restricts the player to a party of three, which hardly amounts to a “force”. Sega has emulated Final Fantasy in order to make the game more appealing to a wider audience. That, in itself, is very disappointing.
Yeah, the founders of Cyan (who are both Christians) made Myst for a small niche underground market of gamers. They made a game that they thought people like them would like to play, and joked about it selling 50 000 copies. Cyan never imagined that their creation would ultimately go on to sell 3.5 million copies. After all, they a introduced a new type of game to the market with no idea how gamers would react to it, which is something many games companies (like EA which imposes a factory-like mentality on its development studios) aren’t willing to do.
I loved how Cyan refused any publishing deals with anyone when they started developing Riven that would force them to develop the game within a certain timeframe. Cyan developed Riven in their own time and in their own way, and after being in development for four whole years, it sold twice as many copies as Myst when it was finally released. Myst and Riven have sold a combined total of 10 million copies, which goes to show that there’s still room for new ideas in the industry. The best part is all those Myst clones out there aren’t very good.
I still intend to complete Riven one day… just as soon as I buy a copy. It’s at the top of my list of games to buy below Shenmue 2.
If we do see another Panzer Dragoon RPG (which is very unlikely), it will probably be radically different from what most of us expect. A grown up Orta would no doubt return as the lead character, and the game itself will probably ooze with mass market appeal out of every pore. Let’s face facts: Sega plans to do everything in its power to turn a profit, and that doesn’t involve giving hardcore gamers, who constitute such a negligable portion of the market now, what they want. I always believed that Sega was an exception to this rule, but now, I don’t know what to believe.
What I find amusing is: all that money Sega wasted on developing the new Virtua Fighter RPG (a game Sega believed would be profitable) could’ve been spent on developing a new Panzer Dragoon RPG (a game Sega believes would be more trouble than it’s worth).
A new Panzer Dragoon RPG would have to be different from Panzer Dragoon Saga if it is to have any hope of selling. Personally, I feel that if Panzer Dragoon Saga was developed for the Playstation it would’ve sold more copies, but Sega doesn’t see it like that. The series simply cannot survive on its hardcore fanbase, so changes are inevitable if we ever see a new game at all, which is unlikely.
I’m just putting myself in Sega’s shoes. If we were talking about a developer like Camelot, I’d trust it to make a great game – not a game made for the legions of mainstream gamers infesting the games industry who are preprogrammed to buy whatever Sony or Square tells them to buy. But we’re not talking about Camelot - we’re talking about Sega.
Cyan is in financial woes as well. The last series did not perform as they hoped, and cost a lot of money. Several important people there have been let go in recent months- I wouldn’d be suprised if they closed their doors.
Kind of off-topic, but I played through Riven for the first time myself recently, and I was pretty impressed; Cyan must have put an awful lot of effort into that game’s production, considering that it was made back in '98. I’d probably only advise someone to play Riven if they’d already finished Myst, though; the series has a pretty strange storyline and setting, and the puzzles that Riven revolves around seemed quite a lot more challenging than Myst’s. (More abstract, too.)
[quote=“Al3xand3r”]That could apply to the normal PD games as well, not just an RPG, Orta wasn’t so radically different tho, was it?
And again how do you know Sega’s opinion on the subject >_<[/quote]
Panzer Dragoon Orta didn’t sell a million copies simply because it was a rail shooter released in a time when shooting games have become a thing of the past. No, in terms of story etc it wasn’t radically different from its predecessors, and that could be considered another reason why it wasn’t one of the greatest success stories ever told.
As for why I believe Sega won’t even consider developing a new Panzer Dragoon RPG, the reason is simple: the ends (sales) do not justify the means (costs of development). Sega doesn’t believe the series has the potential to be even remotely profitable (based on the sales of the previous games in the series), yet somehow, Sega came to the conclusion that Virtua Fighter Quest, which flopped in Japan (along with Nightshade), would be.
Come on Alex, you’ve been telling me from the start that games companies only care about making money, and that Sega is no different. I’m slowly waking up to that fact now. Perhaps Sega will release a new 3D Sonic game every year now that its purpose has become clear.
Parn once said that Sega’s downfall was attributable to its unshakable habit of creating “one experiment after another” (like Burning Rangers, Jet Set Radio and Shenmue), but I’ve always regarded that trait as one of Sega’s most defining characteristics. Now, of course, Neo Sega has shifted to the other end of the spectrum whereby it is constantly aiming to please the unsurprisingly fickle casual gamers who hold the fate of the games industry in the palm of their hands. Sega should strive towards giving gamers what they want while creating the games the people there actually want to create, otherwise Sega risks losing the very vision that once helped it rise to the top of the industry.
Kind of off-topic, but I played through Riven for the first time myself recently, and I was pretty impressed; Cyan must have put an awful lot of effort into that game’s production, considering that it was made back in '98. I’d probably only advise someone to play Riven if they’d already finished Myst, though; the series has a pretty strange storyline and setting, and the puzzles that Riven revolves around seemed quite a lot more challenging than Myst’s. (More abstract, too.)[/quote]
I’m no expert on the Myst series, but I’m going to find the time to play Riven one day. Imagine if Myst didn’t sell though; would that automatically mean it was a poor game which wasn’t worthy of our money?
Some people liken the poor sales of certain games as a culling of the weak when sometimes it’s simply the case of great games being overlooked. Words can’t describe how much I hate this phenomenon.
[quote=“Geoffrey Duke”]
…
Parn once said that Sega’s downfall was attributable to its unshakable habit of creating “one experiment after another” (like Burning Rangers, Jet Set Radio and Shenmue), but I’ve always regarded that trait as one of Sega’s most defining characteristics. Now, of course, Neo Sega has shifted to the other end of the spectrum whereby it is constantly aiming to please the unsurprisingly fickle casual gamers who hold the fate of the games industry in the palm of their hands. Sega should strive towards giving gamers what they want while creating the games the people there actually want to create, otherwise Sega risks losing the very vision that once helped it rise to the top of the industry.[/quote]
The (not so) funny thing is that the mainstream games Sega is making aren’t selling well either. The exception is the Sonic Adventures series but who knows for how many time more?
I don’t know what Sega will do but if they try to do the same mainstream junk that Sony, Square and others do, they will be doomed because these companies already have the full atention of all mindless Drone-Gamers out there.
