13th February 2005, 1:48 AM
Quote:Then all video games are computer games, since every console is technically a computer.
Ancient super computers don't count!
Those weren't the OLDEST computers... they were early, but the kind you'd find on large college campuses. Which is why people at colleges were the first ones to create computer games. :)
Consoles are computers too? Of course they are inside. We base the difference based on what we play the game with, where we play it, and what we watch it on. Those early machines are computers by all those counts, just like Pong is a videogame.
Quote:Those charts are all over the place. Specific months in different years? Why not show all months and all years?
And you made a bunch of mistakes, not counting those ever-popular hunting FPSs.
As I said when I first posted these lists, this is all I could find. I remember in PC Gamer seeing sales charts monthly from PC Data, but since NPD bought them several years back the regularity of the charts seems to have dropped off... I'm sure I could find a bunch of charts going up until 1999 or so, but you've already said that you want recent stuff and there just don't seem to be many recent game sales chart lists available. So this is what we've got.
And yes, it is patchy... but they are essentially random. I don't see how I could say that the rest of the time would be dramatically different... we've got the years of 1998 and 2003, a month in 2003, a month in 2002, two weeks in 2004, and a week in 1999... it's not a perfect sample but it should be good enough to get the basic themes of game sales. You only contest it because you don't want to admit that what is there is there.
As for the hunting games... nice try. Really. But how about I use your words against you?
Quote:That was 1998. 2004 is not 1998.
(What you said when I said that one of the first lists I posted was indeed an annual list -- 1998.)
And that is relevant because there are no hunting games in any of the lists from 2002, 2003, or 2004. There are three hunting games in the 1999 week list and four in the 1998 overall list, if you wanted to know their total. But the fact that none of them appear in any of the other five lists from the last three years should suggest that their popularity has faded... they still exist, but in smaller numbers and clearly with smaller sales.
And calling them FPSes, while technically true, is also humorous because they are CASUAL games. Yes, they are first-person games where you shoot things, but they are solely for causal gamers. And you have made a MAJOR point of not discussing casual PC games much.
The reason I would rather leave them out, though, is simply because of how awful they are and how I'd rather expunge the bad memories of how popular that garbage was for a couple of years. :D
But if you REALLY want add "Hunting FPS: 3" to the 1999-week list and "Hunting-FPS: 4 to the 1998-year lists I had in that post.
It's silly, though, and is mostly a somewhat desperate attempt by you to save a point you've made so strongly but which just does not hold water.
Quote:Well I mentioned actual sub genre titles (R&C, Sly Cooper, Mario Bros., Donkey Kong [I should have stated GB version]) and then kind of went off on a tangent with simply innovative titles (Yoshi's Island, Sonic, Mario III).
Ah... that makes more sense then (see what I meant by both of us being confused? :)). Yeah, Donkey Kong for GB is a decent candidate for new subcategory... not definitely, because it was released in 1994 and I am CERTAIN that there were platformers released before that that had strong puzzle elements, but at some point that subgenre was created and Donkey Kong '94 is one of the best examples of such a game. Which one actually created the subgenre, however, I'm not sure.
Mario Bros.? I know it was utterly essential for the continuation of video gaming, but was it actually revolutionary or was it just evolutionary? I'd probably tend towards the latter... though perhaps the former is true. I'd need proof though.
As I said, Sonic, Mario III, etc (Yoshi's Island too? I've played it... yeah, I guess it's not a new subgenre because it does play a lot like past games in the genre. It probably is more different than Mario III or Sonic, however.) don't qualify. Nice to see that you agree.
Quote:That's precisely my point: you don't have nearly enough experience to actually debate this. Especially since most of the platformer sub genre creations in the past six years has been seen on consoles you've never owned.
It's not very smart to say that someone who has played a lot of games doesn't have the experience to discuss one of the genres they have played most because of not playing two or three titles. It just makes no sense at all.
Quote:Like what? I've already addressed R&C, Sly Cooper, and Donkey Kong [GB and GBA versions]. If you'd like I could name a whole bunch of other platformers that created new sub genres. Jak II ("GTA" platformer), Metroid (shooter/adventure platformer), and Viewtiful Joe (didn't I also mention this one? it's the fighter platformer).
Metroid, yes. Viewtiful Joe as a fighter/platformer... perhaps, I don't know. Going back all the way there have certainly been lots of side-scrolling games with some jumping along with lots of hitting people, however... I'd be more inclined to call Viewtiful Joe an evolution of sidescrolling beat-em-ups and action-platformers than a true new subgenre. The Speedup/Slowdown superpowers are indeed new in the category, but I don't think that's enough to call it a full new subgenre when it's a kind of game that has a long, long history. (Oh, and you hadn't mentioned VJ before, I think) VJ's contribution to that genre seems more like what Rocket did for 3d platformers, having adding something (in that case the realistic physics engine) in a classicly styled title...
What I was referring to, though, was that you should have been talking about Sonic, Mario 1, and Mario 3, the games I'd discussed, as opposed to R&C2, which I hadn't; you have now, however, in your last post, so it's better now.
Quote:I honestly can't think of too many good, original, "risky" Japanese games that sold poorly here.
It probably depends on how you define "good" sales... selling most of a limited shipment where it probably wouldn't have sold great if it had gotten a huge release? That happened all the time with such games.
Quote:All of those people who wanted to play my game are PC gamers.
But as I said, how many of them have played many action, platform, racing, etc. games on PC? People who do are probably a minority of PC gamers when compared to ones who play mostly strategy, PC RPG, or building or management sims... And as I said I wouldn't say many people at TC are very big PC gamers.
Quote: This coming from the person that defended BG&E's PC controls! HA!
BG&E is like Grim Fandango: playable but less fun on keyboard. :)
The game is better once I use gamepad emulation (the Saitek software) to map the keys to my gamepad... it's not as good as real gamepad controls (I just have to play Rayman III to prove that), but it's better than the clumsy usage of keyboard and mouse the game uses... it COULD have worked fine on keyboard and mouse, if they had bothered to convert the control scheme to a PC one, but they didn't. They were lazy and just button-mapped without letting you use gamepads. So yes, in that case the controls as implemented had problems... but the game potentially could have not had as large problems as it had even if it hadn't had gamepad controls enabled (though of course it should have) if they hadn't been as lazy.
Quote: Finally an honest statement that truly reflects your opinions.
I was tired of spending paragraphs to say that with a lot of detail, so I didn't... but it really is true.
Quote:First of all, that was not a direct reply to my post. It only indirectly had to do with what I said. Secondly, you are sorely misinformed. Ask any decent PC/console developer which platform they would rather develop for if money was out of the equation, and just about all of them would say console. I've talked to many people in the industry about this very topic, as well as students from major game design schools, and they all agree with me. The keyboard and mouse was not meant for playing games and that is very evident in the fact that there are so few genres dominant on the PC. In the PC world, the controls come first. All game design has to work around the control setup. I'm sorry to burst your PC-fanboy bubble, but that results in very limited game design. On the other hand, with consoles, the controls are actually designed around the gameplay. There are new controller standards each gen, and that is because of the ever-evolving gameplay ideas that console developers have. Nintendo is the foremost innovator in the entire gaming world, and their controllers have all been designed around gameplay ideas. That is how it should work, not the other way around. This is very simple logic that cannot be denied, no matter how much of a stubborn fanboy you are. PC developers are very limited by what they can do with the kb&m, that is a fact. You know nothing about this, Brian. You really, truly don't.
It wasn't a direct reply to what you said but a reply to what I took your statement to mean...
We've argued about this before. Nothing is different this time. You are still incorrect about so many of those assumptions... that I know nothing, that I have no clue about what I'm talking about, that I'd make no sense even if you did listen to me, etc, etc... but sadly I don't think that you're suddenly going to start listening to me now when you haven't before.
You just are not correct about your "simple logic" that is the basis of your arguement! Yes, on every platform the game needs to be shaped to fit the available controls. Of course. I said so too. Where you go wrong is when you go from there to say that the keyboard and mouse doesn't allow for a great variety of gameplay experiences. This is simply not true! So keyboard and mouse only allow for a very limited number of gameplay design choices? As I've said before I don't see why you can't understand that that arguement can equally be made for consoles.
(presents such an arguement as a point of discussion) You see, gamepads are greatly limited in what they can do. 1)When you are holding a gamepad both hands must be holding the pad. You cannot have one hand free to control another control device. 2)Gamepads are extremely, extremely limited in terms of buttons. They have a small number of them and you must squeeze your controls onto them... very inconvenient and often problematic as it forces you to either reduce your function set and inconvenience the player or make the game a pain to play (forcing you to use menus to access commands, button combonations, etc). This is detrimental to many kinds of games and makes some of those types almost impossible to play. 3) Gamepad controls almost forces direct control of game objects. Indirect controls (cursors) are very clumsy to use with a gamepad and are barely acceptable at best. The same goes for navigating menus with arrow keys and buttons. (especially when compared to PC games that both have mouse control to click the buttons and keyboard hotkeys for each important button!)
See what I mean? Yes, the control schemes are different. But gamepads are not better for all uses or game types and there are lot of kinds of games that do not benefit for being on them. Others do, of course, which is why they use them. But your continued assertions that gamepads are essentially always better and keyboards always worse is FALSE. Always has been and will continue to be. You could try to say something that has a chance at validity like 'more genres are better with gamepads than are better with keyboards', (a definitely debatable question) of course, but you don't, really...
The one such arguement that you do make is that console controllers, by virtue of their constant changes, lead to more innovation than appears on the PC with its mostly static control systems. I don't know how accurate that is for each market as a whole. There are a few points in the console market where a true dramatic change was noticed -- the NES introducing crosspads as opposed to mini-joysticks and the N64 with its analog stick, primarially -- but, say, from N64 to Gamecube? I don't think that that controller change really greatly affected the development of games on the system. Oh, Nintendo stated over and over that the GC controller was different and unique and would lead to different kinds of games, but was that followed up? Not really. The GC didn't do things appreciably differenly from other consoles. The face-button-size thing only changed how you play a little and you quickly get used to it and adjust. It's not a sea change in gameplay. The shoulder buttons are an even more extreme case... remember how the analog-clicks were going to be big? And what, four games have actually used them? :)
Anyway, as far as console controllers go we're at a plateau. They're dual-analog pads that look pretty similar. Now, Nintendo is saying that the Revolution will be totally different in this. Will it? Perhaps. But a better question is SHOULD it. Will third parties strongly support the Revolution if it has some totally weird controller that makes it very hard to bring games over to the console? Or will we just see games on PS3 and Xbox Next and not Revolution because those consoles are much more conventional and will certainly continue that 'Dual Shock Copy' theme of controller design (that is, the marriage of the SNES and N64 controllers. :))... it's too early to say. But it's a good question.
As for the PC, there have admittedly been fewer changes. There was the keyboard. then there was the keyboard and two-button mouse. Now the standard is keyboard (same as ever, complete with the most useless key of all time: 'Scroll Lock'.) and three-button wheel mouse. Next perhaps we'll see the spreading of those wheel mice that also tilt left and right... it's not as much as the addition of the analog stick to consoles, but it is SOMETHING and it has enhanced the PC gaming field in ways that help PC games: easy scrolling of dialogue boxes, quick weapon switching, perhaps looking up and down, etc.
If I had to guess, I'd say that your core complaints are that (1) the PC doesn't work as well with a lot of forms of direct character control (first-person or third-person-but-it-controls-like-first-person) while gamepads are perfectly suited for such controls and (2) that keyboard/mouse leads to more keys being used in the control scheme, which leads to unnecessary complexity and confusion. The first of those is true. The second, I agree with less but is sometimes an issue. But my assertion is that not all games are best with direct character control. And sometimes complexity is good. Both of these issues, I'd say, are matters of opinion. That is, if you prefer simpler controls and direct control, play console games; if you like more complex controls and either first-person or indirect controls, play PC games. Neither system is inherently better for every, or most, situations.
And aren't balance and judging things equally traits that you often claim to try to apply?