Stressful Moments In Gaming – Majora T Table Topics Response

Sony’s Downfall Couldn’t Come Sooner

So Sony have recently released their damage control in regards to the PS3’s Playstation store which I find to be absolutely hysterical as not only does Jim Ryan finally have to go back on his plans to get rid of the Playstation Store but there is absolutely no mention of the Cmos battery issue whatsoever. You would think that Jim would want to take out two birds with one stone but in the end, his damage control backfired because he failed to account for the real problem here.

You see Sony, if this was any other industry, we would have had you by now. I mean this is literally checkmate right here, you can’t possibly pull yourself out of this, your days in the gaming industry would be comming to an end… but this is the gaming industry we’re talking about here where people actually think that when companies admit they are wrong about something, they have suddenly pulled a heel-face turn but that just isn’t the case, there’s so much for Sony to account for and it doesn’t just stop at the Cmos battery issue either, there’s also the price rise, the online paywall and of course the lack of backwards compatibility.

Hikikomori Media‘s video

For those who are unaware, Hikikomori Media released a video in regards to the Cmos issue, in this video he showcases many of the issues that both the PS3 and PS4 has. If the PS3’s Cmos battery dies, all digital games will be either innaccessible, or reverted to trials, essentially taking your license to play those games away, which is why I find it so funny that Jim Ryan has decided to bring back the Playstation Store, it’s almost as if he’s just figured out about the Cmos issue and decides to continue to sell digital games knowing that they will inevitably get reverted to trials, that is until next gen when they will try to take the store down again LMAO. If this wasn’t bad enough, get this, the Playstation 4 is worse, well of course it is, it’s a newer console and it goes without saying that every since the 6th console generation, consoles get worse and worse with every release. The Playstation 4 will not only render digital games obsolete but physical games as well. So what you’ll be left with is a useless brick.

Apparently the Xbox systems aren’t much better due to the need for online activation according to this tweet which makes things even worse for console gamers. It’s almost as if the end times have come if you don’t own a gaming PC but fortunately for me, I haven’t invested too much into modern systems but believe me, I’ll be taking some losses from this as I do own a PS4 so I’m not exactly happy about the news but part of me is relieved that I wasn’t foolish enough to invest much money into collecting for modern systems.

With all this in consideration, there couldn’t be a better time for you console gamers out there to get into PC gaming, we want all of you on here so that we can finally end console exclusivity so that we never ever have to support these companies to access games ever again. Trust me on this, you are all better off with PC now, sure it may be difficult to set up but by the time you finally get it going and understand it, it’s actually easier than console gaming because you are able to diagnose problems easier (by understanding your own system), back up data with a simple copy/paste to any external HDD without any need to format it, several free storefronts, some of which being DRM free where you can get competitive prices, free online (with arguably better servers) and of course the ability to mod your games in any way you please. It really is a dream come true. Now I know, people have preached about this many times before but by now I hope you’re smart enough to realize that it is the smartest choice.

You don’t need to sit at a desk to play PC games either, just plug in a gamepad and sit on your couch, Steam even has a big picture mode just for couch gaming, it’s nuts just how accessible and flexible PC gaming is nowadays, why aren’t Y’all jumping on this opportunity? Why stick with consoles? I don’t get it at all. Your physical games are gonna be worthless when the consoles finally brick themselves anyway so you can’t really use that argument anymore, at least on PC you have DRM free digital games which you can back up as much as you like, though to be fair, not every game is DRM free and I’m aware of this. I partially blame game companies for this as they refuse to release their games on DRM free platforms but that’s a whole other fight to be fought. You can’t fight that fight if you’re still on the side of these consoles.

Now y’all are probably wondering, what of Nintendo? It goes without saying that they are a threat to the consumer but as of now, they aren’t showing any weak spots sadly so unfortunately we will have to put up with that for a while. Let’s just be thankful that Sony is failing because that’s a stepping stone in the right direction, I’d love to see you smug bastards try to make it on PC, see how strong your brand is against GOG and Steam, now that’s something I’d absolutely love to see Sony try and do, it would be the equivalent of putting Sony in the stocks and throwing wet sponges at them, it would be hilarious.

As great as it would be to witness Sony’s downfall with my own eyes, the chances of it happening are still very low because Sony Fanboys will eat up all of Jim Ryan’s damage control and completely overlook the cmos issue. Oh well, maybe next time in another 100,000 years when I’m dead, Sony will finally get their comeuppance one way or another, just like the rest of those corporate scumbags… I hope.

Theorycrafting: Derivative Game Design – How To Utilize Ideas From Older Games Properly

It’s inevitable for games to take ideas from their predecessors, since the foundations that have been established by older games can potentially be re-used. Why spend time trying to come up with a foundation of your own when you can just take what somebody else has done and use it to build an entirely new experience? Derivative game design is certainly a valid strategy for making games, however I feel that most game developers these days see it as the only way to make games and to be honest, I kind of see why. We live in an era where publishers refuse to take risks on new, unproven concepts and expect everything to be derivative. Then you have indie developers who want to make the next Metroid or the next Zelda game, it’s all the same really. The only difference between these two types of developer is that Indies are far more likely to base their game off of niche franchises whereas AAA developers are more likely to use popular franchises as influences. Both developers suffer from the same problem however and that is what has lead to an era of what many call “spiritual successors”.

Now it’s no secret that I am a fan of the 6th console generation of gaming, back then we had all kinds of games for different tastes, many of which took risks, some paid off, some didn’t. It was a very exciting time to be a gamer back then and it is because game developers were all trying to make focused games. Back then, publishers were willing to consider the opportunity for those games to thrive in the market. Nowadays however, publishers have reached a point of complacency. Now there’s no reason for them to take risks since the pay off isn’t worth it like it used to be since game publishers didn’t have the luxury of microtransactions back then, so they had to make sure that the games were good or fans would stop buying games from them. Back then, many of us didn’t have the internet, so finding out about new games was considerably more difficult. If you wanted to get a new game, you had to go to a game store and judge a game based on the cover and what was advertised on the back of the box, either that or word of mouth influenced what games were worth playing and what weren’t. Word of mouth was the biggest deciding factor for many, therefore it was important for developers to make the games not only eye catching, but fun to play so that people would recommend them to friends.

Nowadays we live in a world where the media is constantly in your face and information is easier to consume than ever. Companies have taken advantage of this by overmarketing their game to the point that people can’t not talk about it. I mean how many Raid Shadow Legends advertisements do you see nowadays? Sure it’s considered a joke at this point for being overly marketed but that hasn’t stopped people from talking about it and when people talk about it, people get curious, it’s human nature to want to see things for yourself to experience what everyone else is talking about so that you can be a part of the discussion. This is why games today are generally dogshit, because publishers know that you can easily make a mediocre product then shove trailers and other marketed related tat in people’s faces then let the consumers themselves do most of the marketing for you by hyping the game up on your behalf. Just give a twitch streamer a free game and they will not only tell their viewers about it but both they and their viewers will broadcast it on social media, which goes through a huge web of followers. I see it all the time people, everyone I follow on Twitter retweets and likes stuff that gets sent to me. Why does twitter have to show me all of this crap? I don’t need to see people talking about Monster Hunter Rise all day but unfortunately, since it’s the biggest thing to come out recently, that’s all people talk about. You cannot escape it, it’s literally all over the internet everywhere you go. The only way to escape is to turn off the internet but if I did that, then I couldn’t be doing what I do now.

My point is that game development strategies have changed over the years, we have to accept that we are never ever going to have another console generation as good as the sixth console generation. So with that in mind, please stop trying to bring back those games with your “spiritual successors” because all it will do is make people compare your game to the game that it is based on and it is almost certain that people will consider the game to be inferior to the game they played years ago. The only way we can solve this problem is by looking back to how derivative game design worked back in the day. The best example of this would be Painkiller, a game that to this day I cannot find any other game in the genre worthy of being anything close to the same experience, yet its mechanics are clearly derivative from other games in the genre. Those games being Quake and Serious Sam. It goes without saying that the director of Painkiller is a huge Quake fan and naturally that led to his game being heavily influenced by Quake. Unlike Quake however, the game also featured large open arenas willed with large groups of enemies as opposed to Quake’s more maze-like level structure. This is something that was previously seen in Serious Sam. However Serious Sam did its own thing and isn’t really comparable to Painkiller outside of this one thing. Despite the movement of Quake and the level design of Serious Sam, Painkiller managed to distinguish itself from other games in the genre.

How did it do that you ask? Well that’s simple, in the behind the scenes video of Painkiller’s development, the developers talk about how fans were displeased with the lack of weapons available to them, the director claimed that from an abstract standpoint, there were actually more than just 5 weapons, they just combined them into other weapons. The reason for this likely has to do with the hotkeys and ease of use, something that developers back in the day weren’t thinking of. Thanks to this fantastic design choice, there are only 5 hotkeys that players need to cycle between, though Battle Out Of Hell added two more weapons, making that 7, they still had multiple functions, making the weapon cycling a lot easier than it would have been if the weapons were all separated. This one design choice alone greatly differentiated the experience from Quake and Serious Sam as it felt considerably more tighter and easier to pick up and play as a result, without neglecting the importance of flexibility. That is why Painkiller is the absolute best of the three games if you ask me, because it managed to neutralize what was needless input complexity. Any game that can minimize the amount of buttons needed to play the game, while still maintaining the flexibility necessary to make the gameplay varied enough to be fun is deserving of praise as that is what all game developers need to strive to achieve and it is one of the many problems that game designers are meant to solve. It’s how game designers manage to circumvent these problems that ultimately makes games so fun and interesting to study and what can ultimately make them stand out from other games. Of course there are many other factors such as theme and pacing that come into play too but all that is for nothing if game developers fail to solve the problems presented to them.

When games are entirely derivative, the desire to solve becomes nonexistent because an entirely derivative game strives to solve nothing. It is important to take inspiration from games of old but it is also important to have a good understanding of what it is you wish to achieve with those ideas as opposed to doing the exact same thing, just because it worked for that game, so it will work again for this game. It’s this mindset that is stagnating our games and it’s partially due to how Publishers treat games like throwaway swag toys that are made to cash in on impulse buyers and the games of the modern era that many indie developers have completely forgotten the ability to distinguish their own games from others, the ability and the willpower to solve problems and bring games to life through a web of solutions is what game designers are meant to do, not create dream worlds and make similar experiences to older games. By doing that, videogames can never truly evolve. When we, the consumers play games, we look for the the dream worlds, we look for the thematic style because that’s ultimately what catches our interest. Game developers should never look at their own games the same way as we do, they should only see things on an abstract level and I think this is ultimately what separates the men from the boys when it comes to game design because believe me, if I was capable at designing games at an abstract level and was skilled at programming, I wouldn’t be wasting my life away making this content, I’d just be making games myself but the reality is that there are people out there that are better than me at that. The thing is though that there are countless people who have learned coding, learned how to make assets and know how to use game engines but they haven’t got a clue about what game design actually is. Yet we see these people making games all the time and while it’s great and all that they’re willing to put time and effort into these things, the results generally don’t leave a lasting impression on people and this is the reason why.

So to summarize my point, derivative design has its place, but it is not the be all and end all of game development. I’m not telling people to make their games entirely unique because I am well aware that it is not only difficult to do but it also isn’t viable. You should come up with your own vision first, a vision that is both pragmatic and is able to see games from an abstract standpoint. Then you need to come up with methods to make things work, even if it means taking design ideas from other games to do this. Just don’t take design ideas for the sake of it and actually think about the implications of such a design choice before you choose to add it. Of course coming up with your own methods is always encouraged but if an older game found an easier way to do it, use that method instead.