I watched a video (below). Which compelled me to believe that thoughts are in a way, like germs. They spread, mutate, and spread, always working to gather more attention. Being a good germ vector, I’m going to share this compelling topic here. And add the mutation: what’s the application to our games?
Gigi
Like I don’t have enough distracting thoughts in my head already, now I also think thoughts about thoughts ;).
Highly interesting video, thanks for sharing! It was a bit depressing though. It makes me ask myself if I would get more stuff done without the internet, and if being part of any online community really is a healthy thing at all for your brain.
Interesting from an academic point of view at least. In terms of how it applies to games though it doesn’t follow the same rules.
“Viral” games are the ones that explode seemingly for no reason, the indie community has seen this many times. Take Minecraft for example - a fairly average sandbox game that did a couple of unique things but borrowed concepts from many other games. Sounds like most games. However for one reason or another someone shared it, next person found it interesting and shared it too, and so on and so forth like the video said.
The key point for games however is that the “thought germs” don’t work to grow the game if they’re angry. If someone complains about a game that’s a buggy mess, makes them angry because of bad design etc then sure it’ll get attention but it’s negative and actively detracts from the game being successful. Games need to strike a different tune to get that “angry” spreading effect and what that tune is changes based on a lot of other external effects.
Like how Path of Exile caught many of those who were disappointed by Diablo 3?
Yep, that’s certainly relevant. Being “angry” (or disappointed) at one game made the gamers pay more attention to another that they perceived (correctly or incorrectly) to have/do the things that they wanted. It was an external effect that Path of Exile had no influence on. One could argue the timing helped but that would require some real clairvoyance to determine that Diablo 3 would be bad at release and time Path of Exile’s development to suit. Imagine what would have happened to PoE if Diablo 3 had been a runaway success.
yep and the 2 parties system of politics:sunglasses:
, germany vs soviets ww2 lolol
lol
xbox one vs ps4 … console wars
pepsi vs coke
Or Unity vs UE4, so silly that people argue about it.
Unity is better!
Actually, sadness is being remembered better than most other emotions and spreads better as well, so video isn’t correct…
You could think about it that way when advertising your game. But in order for it to affect your game itself you would need an epic scale AI that makes this system work and look good inside game. I doubt anyone has ever done that.
And know who benefits from these arguments? Unity and UE4! The arguments keep the discussion alive, which keeps people thinking about the products, and then, someone gets angry, picks up a new thread, and it goes on. Just like in the video. I still wonder how we could leverage this in games.
Here’s a thought exercise. What if you had 2 companies, creating opposing games - like DIRECTLY opposing (i.e. EQ vs WoW). And, what if they were sort of in collusion, not from an illegal perspective, just sort of agreeing to foster this sort of environment.
Gigi
A very interesting thought. For Battlefield vs Call of Duty it might actually have helped both franchises grow. Is there maybe an aspect to the games beeing competitive or not? E.g. how are people talking about Cities: Skylines vs Sim City? I play neither so I don’t know if there is a similar rivalry going on.
Well from what I hear MGS2’s theme was directly about “meme theory,” and it’s not like you couldn’t get a riot going by shouting “FOR THE HORDE” at Blizzcon. The main value is really not in the game, but around it Hatred style. You want the tumblerettes to get pissed off to become free PR.
Being a Unity developer, I think about the products quite a lot? It is rather relevant to my interests. The important thing of course is to keep in mind the long-term goal of what I want to create and avoid circular, useless arguments, or becoming one of those people who have been around the block for a decade on these forums whistling the same old tune. No need to fall off the other side of the horse though and look at it all with total cynicism.
That’s why I tend to drop in and out of these sort of arguments quickly. I make my points, argue them against opposing arguments, see if they survive or not, and when I feel there’s nothing else to say, or the argument is going nowhere, I’m out of there. If Unity or Unreal look at those sorts of discussions with a constructive point of view, that’s a bonus. The thread got a lot of attention though so I hope they take notice.
GTA owes its entire existence to making groups like the Catholic Church angry. So their certainly are some take away to learn from this video.
Some random thoughts from the video
I don’t think that is true. I played the first GTA when it came out, and imho for its time it was quite innovative and felt rather fresh gameplay-wise. Controversy certainly didn’t hurt, but I think the series is strong enough in narrative and gameplay to stand on its own. Unlike games like Hatred, which is not able to make anyone care about it without being offensive. The dev is working on a new game:
http://destructivecreations.pl/isdefense/
You fight against isis in a turret based shooter… yawn. There is no real controversy here. Hatred had roughly 20 times more comments on steam greenlight:
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=356532461
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=620126439