Giantevilhead

BioWare in name only. I wonder if gay/lesbian romances are in. That may be true but the studio is headed up by the guy who created Might and Magic, Heroes of Might and Magic, and King's Bounty. Technically, he also created Rift but left before the game was complete.

But social stigma usually results from harming economical interests of your society. When all the software producers are from a country far away (and one that is clearly rich) it's rather hard to convince anyone to care about their business. True, but once those countries start creating software of their own, their governments will be pressured to implement laws that prohibit piracy. Our game companies can speed up the process by doing more business in those countries. The fact that companies don't want to do business in those countries because of piracy ends up exacerbating the problem. Yes, they will suffer in the short term but once they start investing money in those countries, their governments will expend more effort trying to stamp out piracy. I'm sure that Wal-Mart lost a lot of money when they first opened supermarkets in China but over time, they stopped all the shoplifting, cart stealing, etc., and they're now making a huge profit.

I wish someone would do a study and gather stats on the demographics of pirates. I'm guessing that culture is a huge reason for piracy. I think that the people who pirate the most come from cultures that either don't have a very good conception of intellectual property and don't have any social stigmas toward piracy. When people are first introduced to something new, they tend to exploit it to the fullest extent. A good example is when supermarkets first opened in China. All sorts of unseemly things were happening. Shopping carts were being stolen all the time. There were people practically living off of the free samples. Shoplifting was rampant. People were just eating the food inside the super markets and dumping the trash in the restrooms. Similar things happened when fast food restaurants opened. Free napkins and condiments were being taken by the bucket load. People were keeping the drink cups for months at a time for the refill. However, there was a concerted effort by the super markets and the government to establish proper etiquette and create social stigmas around those kinds of behaviors. After a while, those problems were more or less stopped.

Brian Fargo is actually in a pretty unique position in that he has control over a franchise that he created. With both System Shock and Might and Magic, the rights to those franchises are owned by people who weren't really involved in their creation. The people who created those games have moved on to other projects. Also, there have been a few attempts to revive old franchise. King's Bounty and the Japanese developed Wizardry games are good examples. Brian Fargo would probably have a much better chance of bringing back Wasteland if he tries to make a small low budget game like Katauri/1C did with King's Bounty.

Did the Enclave intentionally activate the package and leave it for NCR to find when they fled Navarro?

I'm hoping for Avatar: The Last Airbender. They could have an elemental combination system like the combination attack system in Phantasy Star 4, Chrono Trigger, and Dragon Age. It could be done with either a party based RPG or an First/Third person shooter/RPG/adventure game. If it's a party based RPG then you can have different characters in the party execute attacks at the same time to create the new effect like they do in Phantasy Star 4 and Chrono Trigger if it's turn based, or like Dragon Age if it's real time. If it's a First/Third person shooter/RPG/adventure game then you'll probably be playing as the Avatar then you could tie different attacks to different buttons and if you press the buttons at the same time then it creates a combination attack. You can also have the option of tying a combination attack to a button once you've discovered it.

We haven't really gotten to a point where you can have the "superstar" developers like we had for a while before gaming had picked up some legitimacy. Game development is incredibly large and jumps between so many different writers and teams that it's very difficult to say without a doubt that one person's vision was the reason it was all wrapped together. In film, the director as a grand facilitator truly does make his or her film with the combined experience of the team. However, can you really say the same for games at the moment? Gaming is at a point where it's too large to be anything other than a massive collaborative effort than a grand tribute to the master strokes of one person. Maybe as the technology gets better and teams get smaller, but definitely not now. The important thing here is that developers need more control over their projects. That's just not likely to happen unless the developers become more well known to the public so that their names can be used to increase the marketability of games or it causes people start pressuring the publishers to give more creative control to the developers. The risk of a developer getting credit for other people's work, and ending up with much more power than they deserve, like a George Lucas of video games. Ah. I see. But they don't have to be a George Lucas. I mean, frankly, I regard Lucas as a one off freak. What about Scorsese or Cameron? As I mentioned before, we already had someone like Lucas with John Romero so the risk is definitely there.

The risk of a developer getting credit for other people's work, and ending up with much more power than they deserve, like a George Lucas of video games.

I think that's an extremely insightful point, if I can say so without sounding too full of myself. In fairness is this because the roles aren't as clearly delineated in game production? I honestly don't know. That's not really important. There are plenty of directors/producers/writers who get a lot more credit than they deserve. George Lucas is an obvious example. What is important is that people on the creative end of games need to have more power and influence over the direction of a franchise so that more decisions about the future of a game series can be made by people who actually make the game rather than the people who sell the game. It's entirely possible for there to be a George Lucas of video games. In fact, I would argue that John Romero is the Lucas of video games. However, for every Lucas, there's a Ridley Scott or Alfred Hitch**** or Stanley Kubrick. In the end, I would say that the risks far outweigh the benefits.

I would say that one of the biggest problems with the gaming industry is how the developers are kept in the background. With the film industry, there is a strong association between the movies and their directors and sometimes writers. People like James Cameron, Martin Scorsese, Ridley Scott, etc., are as well known as the movies they've made. That gives them a lot of power and influence. That's not the way it is with games. Most casual gamers have never heard of people like Amy Hennig, Tim Cain, Jon Van Caneghem, Brett Sperry, Linda Currie, etc. That makes it significantly harder for developers to make decisions about the games they've created and push their own agenda. These great developers are still around but they just don't have the influence to really make the games they want.

As much as I love lightsabers, it really doesn't make any sense for all Jedis to use them. The Jedi's true weapon is the Force, anything else they use, whether it's swords, whips, blasters, katars, etc., just depends on the individual Jedi's preference.

I think that unconventional have a better chance to succeed in today's market due to viral marketing and over saturation of certain genres. Rockstar has made quite a few unconventional games that have been successful like Bully, Red Dead Redemption, and L.A. Noir. There are also the success of indie games like Deathspank, Super Meat Boy, Limbo, etc. With Obsidian's experience, they could easily make an RPG in a non traditional setting. It could be a comic fantasy like Discworld or an Austin Powers/No One Lives Forever type spy comedy. Heck, it could be something even more original like having a game set in a sci-fi or larping convention. It could have the same mechanics as New Vegas where you play a character similar to the Courier, doing jobs for the company that runs the convention. The different factions would be the fans of different sci-fi shows. The Star Trek fans would be like the NCR and the Star Wars fans would be like the Legion. Then you have various smaller factions like Dr. Who fans, Farscape fans, old BSG fans, new BSG fans, etc. Then hostile raiders/mutants factions like the Twilight fans and the Avatar fans.

NOLF and Freedom Force were no more over the top humorous than Portal 2. Portal 2 probably had more jokes relative to game length than both NOLF and Freedom Force. Turn based RPG's don't sell very well either and look at how many old school Fallout fans want another isometric turn based Fallout. Comedic games are generally made with much lower budgets and don't get a lot of advertisements. However, they do reach cult status much faster than other types of games. Look at games like Sam & Max and Conker.

I think the problem is that RPG's are expected to sell on cinematics and story instead of gameplay. Maybe it would be easier to pitch a IWD-type game as "squad based strategy with RPG elements" Giving players the ability to create their modules is a good option. Challenge modes/arenas/dungeons could work too.

Turn based strategy games seem to be doing OK. Civilization 5 was quite successful. Heroes 6 and Sword of the Stars 2 are coming out soon. I'm sure that there's some publisher out there who would be willing to do a turn based RPG.

Although, you could also telegraph misses audibly. You could have certain sound effects to indicate a missed or deflected shot or have the enemy taught you on your poor marksmanship or how your sword has no chance of getting through their plate armor.

? Thats probably less of a technology issue than a too much work issue. I suppose, it would require a lot more different animations for everything. Plus it would be hard to sync everything up so that it looks good. If an enemy is already performing an action when you attack and miss, you don't want the animation to go directly from one to the other, there has to be a smooth transition.

I guess the real problem is that technology has not yet caught up to imagination yet. An attack roll that fails to beat an enemy's AC does not necessarily mean that the attack misses. Most GM's are not going to just say "you swing your sword and you missed" every time you fail an attack roll. Instead, they'll describe how you missed or how the enemy deflected your blow with their shield or how your blade only scratched the dragon's scale. Computer games don't do that. They don't telegraph every miss in a meaningful way. If they did, players would probably be much more willing to accept those random elements in an FPS game.

But "better than" is an opinion of the player. That's why you have classes like the Wild Mage, which is all about risk. Wouldn't the logical solution be to introduce a "degrees of success" type system? Making a random check save or die will make the player reload until they succeed but making the player meet a specific skill requirement also has problems. If you see a door you don't have the skill to unlock, it's pretty annoying having to remember to come back when you raise your skills enough. You'll either forget or just cheat to unlock it. You have similar problems with other types of skill checks. If you meet a speech challenge you can't beat, then you can just reload an earlier save, level up and then come back to beat the check. So I guess the way to do it is to lower the skill check required to succeed but add rewards or punishment based on the player's skill rank vs. the DC check. For example, a lock may have a DC of 25 but you can beat it if you have 5 lockpicking skill at the cost of a bit of extra resources, but don't make the cost too high, and maybe a "frustrated" or "hand cramp" debuff. If you have 25 lockpicking skill, you unlock it for "free" and maybe gain some bonus experience. If you have 50 lockpicking skill, you can recover some parts from the lock which you can use for crafting or sell for cash.

I don't agree with the first point. I would say it's more of a matter of giving the player the ability to mitigate the risks involved in randomization. Some players like risk, while others do not. Developers should offer options for both kinds of players. For example in an RPG, the player should be given access to both skills and item that with a fixed stat/bonus, like a gun that does 50 damage, and skills and items with a variable stat/bonus, like a gun that does 30 to 60 damage.

Frequent small perceptible changes should be the most effective. Also, persistence can be created by stretching the ratio of reinforcements. Of course that's already built into the system with greater experience requirements for higher levels but then level caps tend to screw up the system.

Old World Blues has been getting great reviews. The funny moments in Obsidian/Black Isle games are also some of the most memorable ones. Obsidian seems to be really good at writing comedy. So why doesn't Obsidian just make a game with an emphasis on comedy? Heck, Alpha Protocol could have had a story and setting that's more like No One Lives Forever rather than Splinter Cell.

I'm hoping for a $20 downloadable isometric turn based Fallout game, maybe using the Onyx engine. There's no reason why Bethesda has to only make AAA Fallout games.

It'll probably be a while before they make another D&D game due to the Hasbro lawsuit against Atari over D&D. Considering how 4th edition was basically streamlined for an MMORPG, it won't be long before they develop one after the lawsuit is settled.

Alpha Protocol Dead Rising 2 Disciples III: Renaissance Elemental: War of Magic Fallout: New Vegas Heroes of Might and Magic VI Homeworld 3 Starcraft II Transformers: War for Cybertron