One of the games the author of this article didn't like was Red Faction: Guerilla. But look at what Tycho of Penny Arcade has to say: http://www.penny-arcade.com... and http://www.penny-arcade.com...
It's true that some games lend themselves more to such investment than others, but almost any game can be given meaning by someone willing to wo...
People who use Linux care, obviously. And you should, too, even if you don't use Linux... because today's modders become tomorrow's professional game developers. And today's modders often use the open-sourced versions of iD's older engines to cut their teeth. It raises the bar for the whole industry.
Compare to Uncharted: http://www.vgchartz.com/gam...
...which has sold over 2.4 million copies. Good PS3 games have legs, and keep selling. Infamous is already doing well, and will keep doing so.
@cherrypie - You're missing the point. It's not all about sales - it's actually about profitability. If you spend less on development (single-platforms save on engine development, hardware, testing, support, production, etc.) then your profit-per-game is greater. Add in the benefits of exclusivity - platform support, marketing assistance, probably even reduced licensing costs - and you can actually make more money on less sales.
This case is actually a really poor example for you...
Different kinds of powers would be cool. Say, a temperature-controller; one track develops fire-based powers, other track develops ice-based powers.
Or a telekinetic; one track develops mass destruction, the other develops fine control.
Imagine combat with a teleporter. You'd need the right control scheme, but...
...or you won't, which will be its own punishment.
Ju, developing for multiple platforms is hard. (I'm not a game developer, but I program enterprise software for multiple platforms.)
With games, you definitely get to re-use textures and marketing and art and level design and such - but I didn't say those costs were duplicated. I specifically talked about the engine which is either a big challenge, or a big cost (multiplatform engines cost more, the more platforms you license them for) and staff (either way you need more staff to...
If you make a game multiplatform, it significantly increases your development costs. Your engine coding is at least twice as complicated, and you need at least twice as much staff. Other costs are roughly tripled (assuming PC, 360, and PS3) - hardware, testing, production, support. (And that's not counting exclusivity bonuses like development support, advertising & promotion, and probably reduced licensing fees.)
If your development costs are high enough, even doubling your s...
@cyberwaffles - Sickle cell anemia is caused by a mutation in the gene for hemoglobin. If you get two copies of it (one from the mother, one from the father), your hemoglobin is malformed, your red blood cells are distorted, and you die young from strokes.
But if you only get one copy, you have increased resistance to malaria. In the regions where sickle cell anemia was prevalent, malaria was too. It can be an advantage in that situation. Some of your children die of sickle cell,...
I'm still working through the good campaign (job, wife, kids, etc.) but I think starting good's the way to go. It's more of a challenge when you can't just blast those moronic civvies who keep running into the middle of a raging battle.
When I get a chance to do the evil run-through, I think it'll be much easier. Thunder Drops galore!
"They Hunger 1", a zombie mod for the original Half-Life. At the start, you have to wander through series of tombs and graveyards, with no weapons, thinking to yourself, "Man, it would suck if these were all zombies."
Then, you eventually get a crappy weapon... and you have to go *back*. And now they *are* zombies...
This patent doesn't talk about emulating the "Graphics Synthesizer", the GPU in the PS2. And that's hard to emulate - it had *massive* bandwidth straight to RAM, but only 4MB on board. So most games streamed textures and vertexes and so forth to it from system RAM. That's hard to emulate - indeed, it's close to the speed of the PS3's bandwith. Add in overhead for emulation, and it's very hard to get it working in realtime.
Not impossible, but hard. Unfortunately, I don'...
I've had pretty much the opposite response to Cole's powers. It seems Sucker Punch went for a more 'realistic' approach. Cole's powerful, and gets more powerful as he goes on, but he's still human; he never feels invincible. I enjoy having to be more strategic - what's the point of playing in God mode? The enemies do have, er, remarkably good aim, but rarely is there a case when you have to take on a bunch head-on.
The karma system can be a bit heavy-handed, and it's a shame that...
Can anyone explain to me why Australians put up with this crap? "The function of laws to protect children cannot be to force adults to act like them."
...Lara Croft would keep falling over forward.
Of course Sony's not happy with the sales of the PS3. Both Sony and Microsoft missed the Wii bus - Nintendo went for a whole different ecological niche 'party/casual games', and won big. MS basically stuck with the niche of 'game console'. No real revolutionary changes. They even went cheap on the hardware - too cheap, as it turned out (RROD, etc.).
Sony went for 'entertainment hub'. One box that'd do it all - play movies & music, games, etc. In terms of capabilities, they di...
I'd like to see a different adventure with different powers. Say, a guy who gets temperature-related powers. The 'good' path develops fire powers, the 'bad' develops ice powers. It'd give a really separate feel to the varying paths.
@Maverick - Gotta agree. I'm no uber-gamer, my nine-year-old son's further along in inFamous than me. (Of course, he's playing on Easy, I'm doing Medium.)
I still enjoy playing it, even if I die some. I just have to play more strategically, that's all - and the beauty of inFamous is that you mostly can. If you're a twitch freak pulling off strings of headshots, good on you. But if you have to think things through a bit, you can, too. I usually grab the high ground and rain death ...
Maybe when I was a teenager. But as a leftie parent, well... I'm a target or comic relief, quite often. Give me something that takes strategy rather than twitch, though...
@Mynd - Microsoft's entertainment division posted an operating loss, though. $130 million worth, on $1.2 billion in revenue. ( http://news.vgchartz.com/ne... I know the entertainment division has had one profitable quarter a few years ago, but I'm not sure it's ever made a profit since.
Sony and Nintendo aren't willing to sell an entire generation or two of consoles at a loss. Microsoft apparently is.