Help and old gamer get back into the habit?

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17 days. I think you beat me

If you used to play God of War, give the new one a go. Not because it’s more of the same. Precisely for the opposite reason.

Nintendo is really nice! But if you’re into hardcore games I recommend those for the PS4 they have a lot of remastered games too so you dont have to really play COD if you dont want to!

Most games these games have devolved into what are essentially business models for the publishers to maximise profits. My opinion is not to look to the future, but to the past. Grab a PS2 or original Xbox or GameCube or anything of the sort, pick up some of the best classics and have fun. Games on current generation systems, save for maybe those developed by CD Projekt Red, Santa Monica and FROMsoftware, are almost exclusively built on greed. It's safer to stick to the old systems until publishers pull themselves together and start producing quality content again.

One word: "Indies".

Only the AAA side of the industry pulls that crap. They want you to think that AAA games are all there is, but... no.

I'll put it this way: I buy games frequently. Like really frequently. I have literally nothing but free time, all the time. I have no spending limit, and no impulse control whatsoever. None. So if I see something interesting, which is frequent, I just buy it. And gaming is my main hobby, so I play these alot.

And I cant remember the last time I had to deal with publisher/developer greed. If I had to guess when I last ran into that, hmmm... probably at least 5 or so years ago. I really dont play AAA games anymore (and good riddance). They're shallow, greedy, too easy, and often buggier than a buggy box of buggy bugs. I do follow what happens on that side of the industry, but that's only because I get a laugh out of it. It's like a bad comedy reel.

There are ALOT of developers out there. Most of them dont want to deal with big publishers, indeed because of that greed. So.... they dont. Not anymore. If you want to ignore the greed? Dont buy from the ones that are selling it. There's always other choices (in this case, thousands of them) but you have to take the time to actually look and see what's there. Unlike AAA games, these dont leap in your face to let you know they exist. Usually.

A big problem for indie devs, is marketing. That is so ludicrously expensive. For a big budget title, the marketing costs are often the same as the development of the game. In some cases, that means millions of dollars, solely for marketing.

indie developers dont have that kind of money, usually. That makes it tough to stand out.

I'd say the best platform to get games, is still PC. The amount of different retailers alone makes it the logical choice.

take a look at the Steam store front and give that a browse. There are so many wonderful big and small games, from big and small studios.

Oh yeah, the marketing bit is nasty.

I was contracted by an indie dev I'd gotten to know, and we made a game. It reviewed quite well. It didnt SELL very well. Had soooooooo much trouble getting it noticed. You cannot sell something that nobody knows about, after all. And this developer had a dedicated PR guy and everything... still not enough.

It isnt just the cost though (indie games typically dont spread via things like commercials and ad campaigns to begin with, even the really popular ones). It's also Steam itself. It's a freaking mess. I've met so many indie devs at this point, and basically ALL of them are running into this problem. It's impossible to get something noticed among the nonstop deluge of random stuff that hits Steam every day. You either get VERY lucky, or you can expect to not sell very well.

And it's not good for the consumer either. The main store page on Steam, for instance. Useless. Utterly useless. I'll put it this way: I find and buy most of my games via the Steam activity feed... the freaking ACTIVITY FEED... because that's the only place I'm going to find the things. The Steam storefront? Well, I'll say, if I used THAT, I'd have missed out on soooooooo many interesting things. Ever noticed just how much clicking you have to do, in order to get to the ACTUAL new release list? It's freaking BURIED in there. And even then, it's impossible to really browse it once you get there.


And as for other vendors, well.... they all have issues of their own really. And most of those issues just make it harder for developers to get anywhere.

I do agree. I don't think indie developers are often driven by greed but that may well change in the future. Then you have kind of hostile developers like Phil Fish who develop great games but end up being windbags and hotheads.

Though I do like Jonathon Blow, Edmund McMillen and other developers like Devolver Digital, THQ Nordic, etc. Binding of Isaac is probably the single most fun roguelike I've played, from such a simple concept. Super Meatboy, which I originally played on Kongregate back when it was a free flash game, is also pretty damned addictive but a massive challenge to go for everything. Hand of Fate is great as well. FTL is good. There are many others.

Still, there are some things that indie games can't satisfy. Large scale, slick combat like Battlefield or rich cinematics, characters and stories like The Witcher or Dragon Age are difficult to achieve on low budgets (even though CD Projekt Red are still technically a small company). There's also all the Mario games which are probably the most outright fun of them all.

Ultimately you need a mix of everything and that honestly can't be achieved just with big or small corporations. That's why the publisher greed thing is damning to the games industry. Not to mention the death of great franchises like Silent Hill.

A big problem for indie devs is also a flooded market. A lot of them make pixel art games. I'm frankly done with pixel art games. 3D graphics make a game inherently more difficult to develop. Another dimension for things to go wrong.

There are games that try to provide high action gameplay, but a lot of it is highly derivative. Bullet hell games, high octane shooters. It's rare to see something actually new and interesting.

Having a good idea is half the work. Adapting that idea to new findings is another big issue. A lot of devs let ego and "their vision" get in the way of making a better game.

Steam being a dumping grounds for all kinds of horrible trash also doesnt help.

I'll put it this way: I generally agree with all of that.... yet I still buy games FREQUENTLY. With no spending limit and zero impulse control, if I see something that looks darned good to me, it's mine. I am *very* picky, but... I still end up buying very frequently, and it's exceedingly rare that I end up disappointed.

Also, speaking from game design experience: 3D does *not*, I repeat, does *not* make something inherantly more difficult to develop. That, my friend, is a myth, and a bad one. With all of the powerful engines and development tools out there, the graphics and art-style are purely up to the developer now. It's not a matter of cost, and it's not a matter of "one is too hard". This applies to the gameplay itself, as well. It's all up to the developer's skill, and their knowledge of the genre they're trying to make something in. Both 3D and 2D have their advantages and disadvantages from a gameplay standpoint... but whatever those are, some creativity can almost always get around them.


As for being derivative? Sometimes, but a hell of alot less so than the AAA side of the industry. Now that being said, it also depends on where you look (I'll get to that in a moment). To be honest I could give quite a few examples of games that are very creative and unique. Just to list a few (none of which are pixel-art):

Hyperrogue (turn-based roguelike in non-euclidean geometry. I promise you, you've never seen anything like this one. No mere description will do for this one. Look it up if interested. This remains one of my all-time favorites).

Scavenger-SV4 (Kinda like the Mars Rover, but in a mild-horror setting. Alternate seamlessly between controlling the rover itself on the planet searching for artifacts, and dealing with things on your own ship. The rover could be destroyed while it's on the planet, or you yourself could end up dead from radiation leaking onto the ship, or other hazards that may appear. This is one of my favorites. All of this is in a first-person view. And no, you dont fight aliens with guns while on your ship or something. First-person does not always mean "shoot everything".)

Subaeria (uses a top-down view, but in 3D. Your character cannot fight, so instead you use this floaty drone thing that follows you. Find and carry "apps" that can infect enemy robots, getting them to destroy each other instead of you. It is a combination of puzzle and action. It is also very hard, and very fast-moving, so quick thinking is a must)

Deep Sixed (Reminds me of point-and-click adventures, but the gameplay is VERY different. In traditional point-and-click, it's about solving puzzles. In here, you're on a ship with a certain number of rooms, each of which is heavily interactable, and based on whatever is going on, stuff constantly goes wrong, and it's up to you to fix it WHILE getting various objectives done, however none of it is scripted. To be honest, I have trouble describing this one in a way that does it justice... just look up the trailer and the store page. This is a game for those who like games about responding to chaos).

Descenders: (someone decided, hey, let's take the idea of biking... specifically, downhill freeriding... and make a game out of it using some roguelike elements. I normally dont like "sports" games or things like them. But THIS one, this is an exception, and again, there really isnt anything else like this one. It'd take WAY too long to explain all of the unique things this one is doing. Bloody difficult though. I STILL cant get past the forest zone. And that's only the second region... bah).

I could go on, and on, and on. These few that I've listed fit within the list of types of games that I personally enjoy... not for everyone, particularly those that want a story-focused experience (I hate story-focused games... usually). And all 5 of those games are very difficult, unforgiving (permadeath is a common feature in stuff I play) and generally complicated, as that's what allows a game to hold my attention. But it's pretty easy to find creative stuff like this in any genre. Again, this is the NORM for me, not the exception. I'm used to finding creative things frequently. Not that I wont play "derivative" stuff, mind you. I've been a fan of bullet-hell games for a LONG time, and that's a genre that rarely changes, but that's fine with me. Not everything needs to be hyper-creative.

Now, as for the pixel-art bit? Alot of that is just because that's what the devs just genuinely want to use. Again, making a 3D game isnt inherantly harder and this includes the art/assets. It's purely up to what the developer wants to do. However, there are WAY more games in full 3D than you might think. It's just that the ones that actually get shown off on big sites and whatnot tend to be pixel-art style, for... some reason. I've yet to figure out why that is. I bet the reason is dumb.




Eh, to be honest, things like large-scale combat, huge stories and worlds, things like that... they're not really budget-related restrictions. Not as much as it may seem. Cinematics though, that one is different. THAT typically does require a high budget. Something like the Witcher's massive amounts of content and huge world is not exactly uncommon, but putting that together WITH cinematics isnt something most indies will do. Though... personally I avoid games that go down the cinematic route. I'm here to play the damn games, not watch them... But yeah, the other stuff is purely up to the dev's own skill/time/resources. Not to mention development style. AAA games are made using an extremely specific development style (I cant think of a better term) that is... pretty restrictive. Devs in those have to stick to that because it's what you do in a professional environment with a bloody huge team. Indies however, can do whatever the bloody hell they want. Dont want to use a design document, for instance? You dont have to (hell, I sure didnt). Stuff like that. The AAA process makes sense for devs that big, but it's also a huge part of why it takes so freakishly long for those games to be made. For smaller devs, they can choose faster options, if it fits them and if it's something they're capable of working with.

The one other big, big problem indies run into: multiplayer-focused games. As in, stuff that's PURELY competitive. THAT one, most small devs are incapable of providing. It's not a matter of skill or design style, but the fact that you *must* have a large audience BEFORE the game even comes out, for it to stand a chance, since games like that are literally unplayable without enough other players around. Which, I think, is part of why multiplayer-focused games are so incredibly stale. Those who COULD be genuinely creative with them, are effectively prevented from even trying. Just another reason why I dont do competitive games anymore, outside of fighting games anyway.


The main problem with all of this though is just getting the word out there. As I said, I dont even use Steam's storefront to find the games I play, and that is definitely a symptom of a bigger problem. There's sooooo many creative and interesting things out there in any genre and at all sorts of scales, but you have to know where to look in advance to find them. I already do, but many do not. So that's frustrating. Some indie games like Isaac stick out and are easy for anyone to spot, but... a great many are hard to find (such as the ones I listed) and will require that you look for them. That was the hardest thing to get used to, when I originally got into these. I went from buying games off of shelves and reading about them in ads/articles, to having to scour the ever-changing depths of the Net to seek the damn things out. It's gotten easier, but I've also been doing it for years now.


Also I'll agree with what you said about Mario. I love Mario. I dislike alot of AAA groups, the greedy snots, but I sure am glad Nintendo is still alive and kicking. Granted, I dont buy their stuff all that often (they do tend to put things out very slowly after all)... but when I do, I know I'm getting something fun, whether it's Mario or Splatoon or something. They're one of those developers that understands that fun comes before all else (including epic cinematics) and I'm so glad for that. Cant freaking wait for Smash to come out in December. That's going to be amazing.

I'm also glad for developers like From Software. I personally dont play Dark Souls (dont like the controls, you see... and I've got like 5 billion other hyper-difficult games as it is) but that is a developer that has consistently just done their own damn thing over the years no matter what everyone else is doing, and I respect that (not to mention they havent gone down the greedy route yet). I wish they'd make more Armored Core games though. I really miss that series.

Having worked on both 3d and 2d games, and even some board and card games, there are inherent differences in how you develop any of those games.

and working on 3d games has always given myself and every other team i've ever worked with or heard of more problems, compared to 2d.

I'm not just talking about the engines out there. Most modern engines work pretty great and smooth, but weird s**t in models will and still happens. You dont really have the problem of weird export bugs in a model, when you're working with 2d sprites.

I've wasted so many hours trying to get software like 3dsmax to what i wanted it to do. and what i wanted was nothing special, but for some unknown reason, this specific mesh will f**k up on export, import or at some other stages.

and that's one part it. there is more xD

grabbing all the other crap that can go wrong with 3d software, developing a 3d game is more difficult. there's just more to go wrong. and whatever can go wrong, will go wrong.

According to those foolish game journalists, hardcore means any game that isn't casual.

So it seems lately, yes.

And you're not a "Hardcore Gamer" unless you have spent the rent money to max-out your system with all the latest hacks, mods, and upgrades.

Neh, most dont actually go about it that way.

Those that actually do those crazy upgrades, are typically those that are already really into the technical and electronics side of things. AKA, doing it because it's something they're genuinely interested in. Typically the sort that also build and fix computers as well.

Even among the more derpy groups of gamers, the hardware has nothing to do with the "hardcore" concept.

Of course, it was a bit different a couple of decades ago... it was much harder to get a gaming-capable machine back then. What with most computers back then being so very weak. Now though, damn near any computer can handle most games. So that's good.