Absolute Anime

Its because of WoW that they are getting their bad rep though :/

sadly, its not JUST WoW that is like that. Its because it is an MMO, that it is like that. Well, half of the reason.. There are two types of MMOs. Free to play, and Pay to play. Runescape, archlord, Anarchy online(I beleive), and lots of others are free to play. Aoin, WoW, Eve, Age of Conan(i think) are all Pay to play. F2P with good admin > P2P in my opinion.
I agree, you should only have ot pay for a game once. I also think that some games should be paid for at all, or should be cheaper than they are. Thats what i like about Indie games. They are awesome, and cheap, and often free. really good free indie games actualy wind up becoming retail games at some points. Euforia, Lucidity, and Osmos are great examples.

Actually, a lot of the games that hit the market in the years 2008 and 2009 where by more independant developers. The problem is, the "enterprising" big companies buy them, and keep them in their roster of developers, and crush what we know as "indie" because there is a big label on it.
Mirrors Edge is an example. Most people see it as an EA game, because most are ignorant as to who develops and who publishes. DICE were an independant Swedish company, them boom, EA bought 'em out. It's sad that this is the kind of world we live in. There are few developers who care about us. Valve are one of the "good guys," because they genuinely care about their communities. Activision-Blizzard are amongst the worst developers for this, as they are always pumping the market with what PC gamers would call Mods. Call of Duty is like the meat and potatoes example. Ever since it hit consoles, CoD has hardly changed. You run, you gun, you die, you try again. Even Modern Warfare, which recieved a very high critical acclaim, is just a mod of the "run&gun" bore from it's predesessors. The only thing DIFFERENT is time and place. If you play the games with an intelligent minds eye, you'll understand.

... [/rant]

This probably belongs in it's own topic now, but, why do developers never/rarely spend the time to make a GREAT game? Games like Metal Gear Solid 1, Chrono Trigger, early "Forgotten Realms" games, games that are SPECIAL? It seems like gamers these days only want play-ability, and not that essence that is seemingly dead?

^i love you
In a totally hetrosexual way.

he makes the points i was trying to, but didn't do as good of a job at.

What "mods" have Blizzard released, exactly? They've always been meticulous about the quality of their games, sometimes postponing release dates to make sure they're perfect.

Diablo, Starcraft, and Warcraft series are all classics that revolutionized gaming in some way.

As for why newer games seem to be less diversified and more formulaic, well.. probably the same reason innovation dies in any other industry, which is that people, including game developers, tend to be risk averse. The VG industry has aged enough that there are already a lot of gameplay systems, plot devices, etc. that are proven to work, so there's less of a reason to innovate and risk profitability.

Mista Cola wrote:As for why newer games seem to be less diversified and more formulaic, well.. probably the same reason innovation dies in any other industry, which is that people, including game developers, tend to be risk averse. The VG industry has aged enough that there are already a lot of gameplay systems, plot devices, etc. that are proven to work, so there's less of a reason to innovate and risk profitability.

What about the addage of "No risk, No reward"?

This is where the independant and mod scene rules, because they can take the risk with no ACTUAL fear. And you WOULD also think that the japanese would know a thing or 2 of how to keep things fresh, y'know? I mean, having been a life long follower of the Final Fantasy series, each game that I've played (numbers 4 through 10-2, not 11 though) have each tried a new element, to lesser or greater sucess (for instance, 10-2's location and situation based ATB was really inspired for such a bad game) and then, Square-Enix produce Last Remanant, which had an enfuriatingly difficult, but extremely rewarding Unit based Tac-RPG, which again, was a true stoke of genius, but, I am told, not well recieved in the West.

Actually, maybe thats it. Maybe the Japanese are relying more on a western market for sales, and are humouring are reluctance to diversify... hmm...

On the plus side, it's nice to recive an intellectual reply, so, Thank you Mista Cola ^^

Mista Cola wrote:What "mods" have Blizzard released, exactly?

I don't believe you answered that in your two paragraph long post, Rikoku.
Quality over quantity.

Your right, I didn't. I was kinda hoping to avoid the answer, because most PC game mods, of which Blizzard do the most, are usually gameplay mods, smoother flow, patches on enemies, weapons, etc, and I didn't much fancy trolling my way through WoW fansites to find out.

square enix= final fantasy series
atlus= persona 3 and 4, p3p, devil summoner

EA/ EA Sports
Naughty Dog
Epic
Blizzard
Sony Santa Monica
Squenix
Kojima Productions