What do you think about the last Jim Sterling video?

[Teila]

@FMark92

You know you can preview most books these days, right?
There are library sites made for just that purpose. Even amazon lets you do that. Same with games. You can look at reviews and gamplay videos and make an informed decision on whether to buy it.

Book previews of ebooks are small, consist of table of contents and a few pages. That is not an indication that the book is as good at the end as at the beginning.

Reviews are based on the opinion of the user. A game I might like may get terrible reviews and a game that gets rave reviews may be a game I do not like.

Besides, if game play videos and reviews worked, this thread would not be here because no one would buy the “asset flipping” bad games that Jim rants about. So obviously, people are buying these games and giving bad reviews and supposedly destroying Unity in the process.

What I get from all this is that just as it is a reader’s responsibility to read reviews, look at the previews of the book and then decide to buy it, it is also the gamer’s responsibility to read reviews, watch videos, and make an educated guess on whether this is the game they want to buy.

If they buy the game, it is because they either like bad games, or that the process, reviews/videos is not honest or helpful…for whatever reason. Or they find that spending $1 to laugh at a very bad game with their buds is okay.

As people have said here, the asset flipping bad games are the minority. It is not hard for most of us to weed them out. So if they are making money off of these games, whose responsibility is it? Certainly not Unity’s as they cannot control what someone does with the assets they buy. It is not the asset developer’s fault as their goal is to sell assets and support them, not curate who buys them and what they do with them. It is not Steam’s fault as they do not make the games (although with the new system it might become their responsibility).

So, if I buy a bad book even after seeing all the reviews and the previews, it is not Amazon’s fault or even the writer’s fault. It is my own. Unfortunately, I cannot get a refund for an ebook. But…all the good books I find and buy make up for a few bad ones.

[system]

@FMark92

No, you don’t need to go viral/fluke/full add campign to make reasonable income from your game. You can build expectation, potential customers and community around your game simply by regualrly interacting with people, showing them works in progress, keeping them posted on release dates, having a piece dedicated forum/blog, giving out preview keys, getting in contact with youtubers that might like your game, gaming press etc.
There are tons of guides on marketing with no budget/very limited budget. Rules don’t change; if you don’t have the money, put in the time.

If after all that you still can’t sell your game, well, make something that someone other than you would like to play. The opposite (making a game that nobody, other than you, would play), I would argue, is harder.
I haven’t seen a game that nobody would play. Jim’s “problem” with unity image really hammers this point. Those games got on steam becasue they had an audience.

You know this from experience right or are you just guessing? What’s “reasonable” to one isn’t to another, if you live in an expensive country it might not be worth it if you earn less than $100k a year. Are you saying most indies don’t do what you’re saying? Because IME they do and in a lot of cases it doesn’t help enough, if it was just a matter of doing a different game again everyone will do it…

There’s issues with either sides, go to niche and the following / player base might not be large enough and if you go too mainstream you’ll have way too much competition in what’s already an extremely flooded market.

It ain’t that simple today, sure four / five years ago when Steam opened their gates it was… Now you’re just a tiny drop in the ocean.

@Murgilod

Platinum games have over 200 staff which drops them from the running of “indie”, anyway I’m pretty sure that was exactly the point I was getting across, I’ll quote myself:

“The irony there being some of the most famous / successful games have some of the clunkyest controls / systems out of both Indie and AAA…” In response to Hippocoder.

So you’re essentially agreeing with me yes? I said games like Batman had “some of the best” not THE best… I haven’t played every indie game out there so of course there could be better.

@EternalAmbiguity

“I’d definitely say that DA: O had a fantastic combat system. One of the best I’ve played in a game period.”

Just standard RPG mechanics we’ve seen in a platitude of RPG’s no? Many borrowed from their own franchises and found often in top down ARPG’s… Sure the party AI system was pretty cool and the pause / relay commands thing (which had been done also many times) was good…

Although we’re really talking about polish here (in terms of this topic), the animations were too slow which showed up all the issues with collision / weight / depth… You essentially most of the time looked like you were striking thin air, there was no real engagement or interactivity. Not saying holistically it’s a bad system because by that point it was a tried and tested methodology (if you like that sorta thing), although I’ve seen it done much better… Kingdom of Amalur springs to mind…

As for DAO2: It was a crippled version of the first combat system with fancier particles and better animations, issue is it turned into an MMO style grindfest… Especially as difficulty relied upon NPC health, I’m not sure why they didn’t automate the combat system entirely as it would of removed quite a bit of tedium.

I seriously dislike MMO style combat systems in single player RPG’s, they aren’t intricate or interesting enough to keep player engagement in what’s an especially long play genre… DAI was the worst of the three and it’s one of the first Bioware games (or RPG’s for that matter) I couldn’t get through, it was so dull.

[GarBenjamin]

@neoshaman

Programmer tend to inflate their influence, but a lot of very advance stuff only happen because artist faked the impossible and producer keep everyone on tracks.

Edited… victim of cell phone post or haste makes waste. lol

Anyway…
Some programmers may inflate their influence but really it is not about a “holy war” between programmers and artists. Not sure how this even came up. It is a simple matter there are many aspects to a game.

The programming can certainly be a weakness or a strength as well as the visuals and design and audio and scope and so forth.

Bottom line is ultimately it is the logic that ties everything together and makes things happen (whether done through writing code in text or wired up visually). So the importance and influence in that to shape a game for the better or worse should be readily apparent IMO.

Saying that doesn’t mean the design doesn’t have a lot of importance or the audio or the visuals. They are all important in their own way and all work together to create the game experience. They don’t all need to be perfect but either they all need to be at least solid (aome minimum level of quality) OR if not then other aspects need to excel to make up for the lacking on the other aspect(s).

Take any game that is great to play even with obvious bad programming and how much would it improve with quality programming? Probably much more than many people realize. Many games are great experiences with lower raw quality graphics or audio but they might actually be better experiences if they excelled in visuals and audio.

Thing is a person can only manage so much. So need to pick their battles as @ often mentions. For me I won’t labor on visuals and instead will focus on design, programming and audio aspects because I am better at those. Play to your strengths.

[zombiegorilla]

@Billy4184

Some games

Many games.
As to the rest you said… Amen!

[EternalAmbiguity]

@neginfinity

DA:Origins had that problem where an outcome of an attack was determined at a beginning of an animation.
I remember fighting the first revenant, and trying to run away from its melee attacks. It didn’t work. Basically, the dude starts a melee swing, you start running away, you’re 20 meters away from him, and you will be STILL hit by the attack, even though you’re outside of his reach.

This is not a problem, this is a good thing. It’s called not being twitch-based.

@neginfinity

DA:2 had the system dumbed down and moved towards flashy combat animations. In DA:O there were more tactics involved, for example, cone spells were narrow and could be targeted between party members. In Drago nAge 2, cone spells suddenly had 130 degree arcs, and by default friendly fire was off. Lack of friendly fire simplified combat animation, and wide spell arcs made your life much more difficult if you’d try to enable friendly fire back. DA:2 also had poor battle design - where in dragon age origins enemies were present on the maps, in DA:2 we had waves of them spawn and jump down from the roofs for no reason whatsoever. Meaning tactic component got thrown away and focus moved towards arcade-like nonsense.

Fair points. Forgot about friendly fire. And true enough about the waves, though DA: O DID have those as well - just not anywhere near as frequently, and not for the first wave.

I always played rogue, so the area attacks never really stuck out to me.

I’ll freely confess that the only “Infinity Engine” game I ever played was Pillars of Eternity, and the combat in that game was terrible.

[EternalAmbiguity]

Just standard RPG mechanics we’ve seen in a platitude of RPG’s no? Many borrowed from their own franchises and found often in top down ARPG’s… Sure the party AI system was pretty cool and the pause / relay commands thing (which had been done also many times) was good…

Although we’re really talking about polish here (in terms of this topic), the animations were too slow which showed up all the issues with collision / weight / depth… You essentially most of the time looked like you were striking thin air, there was no real engagement or interactivity. Not saying holistically it’s a bad system because by that point it was a tried and tested methodology (if you like that sorta thing), although I’ve seen it done much better… Kingdom of Amalur springs to mind…

As for DAO2: It was a crippled version of the first combat system with fancier particles and better animations, issue is it turned into an MMO style grindfest… Especially as difficulty relied upon NPC health, I’m not sure why they didn’t automate the combat system entirely as it would of removed quite a bit of tedium.

I seriously dislike MMO style combat systems in single player RPG’s, they aren’t intricate or interesting enough to keep player engagement in what’s an especially long play genre… DAI was the worst of the three and it’s one of the first Bioware games (or RPG’s for that matter) I couldn’t get through, it was so dull.

It was the tactics system that elevated the game above most. The fact that you weren’t stuck with this terrible AI like in most games, that you could modify their behavior based on situation. When starting combat, have everyone target mages. Have your mages focus on debilitating spells. Have your warrior focus on CC and aggro style skills. Though again, I’ll point out that I played using the Advanced Tactics mod, which included a few new features (like being able to tell your mage to automatically revive a dead character, or tell rogues to maneuver behind an enemy for the flanking bonus - that should have been in the base game).

It was brilliant, and literally the only other game I’ve seen do this kind of thing was FF12 for some insane reason.

DA I was an absolute tragedy. It totally massacred the tactics system, and gave you horrendous AI (like your ranged characters running into and staying in melee territory) that forced you to play it the same boring way you play every other party based RPG, herding cats. It was terrible. Not only that, but you had the arbitrary, controller-based 8-skill limitation which only applied to the player (your AI partners used all of their skills, except when you switched to them), and of course when the game first came out it didn’t have auto-attack (and it wasn’t put back in for some time).

There was some interesting stuff, like the no healing spells, and barrier / guard (that was a really interesting mechanic), but by and large the combat was a dumpster fire.

It was a shame because the world-building and lore of the game was honestly amazing, with characters like Solas and Flemeth (among many others of course). It was a case where gameplay was bad, the main plot was mediocre, but the worldbuilding was strong enough (for someone particularly invested in the series) to hold it up.

[neginfinity]

@EternalAmbiguity

I’ll freely confess that the only “Infinity Engine” game I ever played was Pillars of Eternity, and the combat in that game was terrible.

That is not an infinity engine game. Infinity engine games are Baldur’s Gate, Baldur’s Gate I, PLanescape: Torment, Icewind Dale.

@EternalAmbiguity

The fact that you weren’t stuck with this terrible AI like in most games, that you could modify their behavior based on situation. When starting combat, have everyone target mages.

Have you played, for example Neverwinter Nights 1 and Neverwinter NIghts 2? 1st one had absolutely amazing combat animations… second one was significantly uglier, but allowed combinatorial madness in class combinations.

Basically, DA:I combat system was a “normal default” for older CRPGs, maybe even dumbed down a little. I definitely didn’t struck me as an “exceptional” in any way. It just played the way older titles would.

[the_motionblur]

@Socrates

This topic is also one of those “religious wars” that come up. People argue today about using Unity vs other engines the same way I remember people arguing about games coded in a flavor of C vs. a flavor of Java, claiming that you cannot possibly code a good game in one vs. the other.

I’ll also point out that Jim Sterling is not the only one talking about the Unity image problem or the garbage games produced with Unity; he’s just a popular figurehead to use because he likes to be over the top.

I am always under the impression when I watch his videos that he gladly plays his part in keeping the image problem alive. He talks much more negatively about Unity than the few positives he lists.

Personally I don’t like him, though. I don’t like his persona and I stopped watching hs videos. So I am probably biased as well.

[EternalAmbiguity]

@neginfinity

That is not an infinity engine game. Infinity engine games are Baldur’s Gate, Baldur’s Gate I, PLanescape: Torment, Icewind Dale.

There’s a reason I put that in quotes I know it wasn’t made in the Infinity Engine. But the combat was designed in the same format, no?

Edit: A few years I thought about playing BG. But I watched a few videos of the combat and it looked like such a spastic, unholy cluster[???] that I never bothered.

@neginfinity

Have you played, for example Neverwinter Nights 1 and Neverwinter NIghts 2? 1st one had absolutely amazing combat animations… second one was significantly uglier, but allowed combinatorial madness in class combinations.

Basically, DA:I combat system was a “normal default” for older CRPGs, maybe even dumbed down a little. I definitely didn’t struck me as an “exceptional” in any way. It just played the way older titles would.

I’m not really sure what the combat animations have to do with the quality of the combat itself (unless we’re talking about character action games). I pointed it out in my reply to ShadowK, but the main thing about DA:O was the tactics system. The ability to rise above the “herding cats” bog-standard combat systems RPGs typically espouse was, in my opinion, a huge step forward.

You had similar things for FF 12 and 13, which I also regard as having very good combat systems.

I actually just recalled that PoE had something similar. But it didn’t feel anywhere near as deep.

[neoshaman]

Nah grandia 2 had better fighting system /contrarian
lol

I have’t played those game yet and I’m waiting for ff12 to come to pc steam.

[EternalAmbiguity]

@neoshaman

Nah grandia 2 had better fighting system /contrarian
lol

I have’t played those game yet and I’m waiting for ff12 to come to pc steam.

Haven’t played it though I did play Child of Light, which I hear has a similar system. I thought it was pretty neat. And unlike that garbage ATB, it actually stops when a character has a turn.

I’m sorry, did I derail this again? Not like it was going anywhere special…

[neoshaman]

Grandia 2 had character moving through the space and you could do neat combo like having a two hit sword, kill an enemy on the first strike then hit his neighbor automatically with the second, and since all character share the same visual bar for turn taking and you had canceling move, it created tons of fun to anticipate, combo, hit, whatever. Children of light only had the visual bar

[ippdev]

What gets me about moderation around here is a thread on AI gets locked and this crap thread goes on and on and on giving this reprobate leather queen and his foul mouth a publicity platform. Kinda skewed moderation IMHO. For the sake of the children reading here this guys videos should be banned from being posted.

[Budowalski]

Unity should completely change their branding strategy. They should FILTER games based on their quality and ONLY the highest quality games should be FORCED to use the Unity logo. All mediocre and poor games should be FORBIDDEN from using their logo. This solves all problems and would boost Unity brand considerably.

[hippocoder]

I see yeah, so that they don’t make any money from the largest portion of their userbase? smart. This would improve Unity by lowering their profits and losing staff so we could have less updates and Unity would fall behind UE4 and eventually languish with game maker before going extinct. They are so stupid and we know best!

Joking aside, the only way to make non-branding work on those scales is to make services bear the brunt of the cost, or introduce royalties, royalty tracking and invasion of privacy, none of which I’m a huge fan of.

[FrankenCreations]

@Budowalski

Unity should completely change their branding strategy. They should FILTER games based on their quality and ONLY the highest quality games should be FORCED to use the Unity logo. All mediocre and poor games should be FORBIDDEN from using their logo. This solves all problems and would boost Unity brand considerably.

This would hurt unity. With no splash screen to buy your way out of why would they keep a free version. Why would someone pay for the full sub if they knew they would be forced to use the splashscreen if they made a good game. I think they should offer incentives to good games to include the splash like paid advertising.

[Tanel]

@FrankenCreations

I think they should offer incentives to good games to include the splash like paid advertising.

Yeah, forcing the splash on paying customers is a ridiculous idea.

Maybe acting as a publisher for select games would make sense. Unity could invest in developers that have a proven track record of shipping quality games with the condition of showing off the engine.

[FrankenCreations]

@Tanel

Unity could invest in developers that have a proven track record of shipping quality games with the condition of showing off the engine.

Agreed, they could do some good without even heavy investment, just free subscriptions. They could have a made with unity contest where we all vote on which games shine and reward them with a chance to get free/discounted subscriptions, assets, or whatever incentive unity decides on for displaying the splash screen.? Just thoughts though I’m no business tycoon.

[Billy4184]

@Tanel

Yeah, forcing the splash on paying customers is a ridiculous idea.

Maybe acting as a publisher for select games would make sense. Unity could invest in developers that have a proven track record of shipping quality games with the condition of showing off the engine.

Not a bad idea … both parties invested in making the game as good as possible, developer gets marketing for the game, and Unity gets to market their engine in a targeted high-quality setting.

[Tanel]

@Billy4184

Not a bad idea … both parties invested in making the game as good as possible, developer gets marketing for the game, and Unity gets to market their engine in a targeted high-quality setting.

Exactly, seems like a win win to me.