The Escapist article about hardcore gaming

Brother None

Brother None

This ghoul has seen it all
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The Escapist has done an article called "Left Behind", about old school and new school gamers, and the decline and fall (or rise) of video gaming. Some excerpts:<blockquote>I know I'm not alone. I've seen entire tribes of refugees during my travels, people fixated on one dead game or another. There are die-hard Ultima Online fans, SubSpace freaks and Fallout geeks. As the Great City of Gaming builds itself on top of its history, an undercurrent of homeless gamers wander between high-poly games, in search of their previous gaming peak. Rarely do they find it. The tribes converge from time to time, occasionally trading stories, their artifacts from ages past. The common theme is always the same: Where's home?</blockquote>And something some people might not agree on, especially on the Bard's Tale thing:<blockquote>Finding a game to love is definitely not hopeless for anyone. Companies are beginning to realize people had good ideas beyond, "Hey! Let's add polygons to that!" and are re-envisioning old classics in some form or another. Bethesda Softworks owns the rights to the Fallout license, which should elicit a collective deafening cry of joy from every fan community in the world. The Bard's Tale remake sent a wave of jubilation through many circles, rippling from deep within central communities. And while many of my fellow hobos might not want to admit it, good games

have been made since the late '90s. Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines by the now-defunct developer Troika is guaranteed to bring some new refugees into the mix. Katamari Damacy has brought jaded gamers out in droves, all tittering over how much fun they're having.</blockquote>Link: article on The Escapist
 
Kharn said:
Bethesda Softworks owns the rights to the Fallout license, which should elicit a collective deafening cry of joy from every fan community in the world.
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Wow, nice bit of journalism there [/sarcasm]. The world would be a happier place if the gaming press suddenly decided to do actual, shock horror, research into what they're typing up. In all honesty, how long does it take to visit NMA or DAC and put a finger on the pulse of the Fallout community? You'd have to be pretty incompetent to miss one of the many threads on the subject at NMA alone.

The article isn't all bad, but the fact that he's so far off the mark in his reading of certain situations has zapped any interest I may once of had in it.
 
A part of that sentence was lost during editing, it was supposed to end with ", except for the collection of glittering gems of hatred the Fallout fanbase is."
 
The Bard's Tale remake sent a wave of jubilation through the fans? Maybe at first, definitely not after though. I've heard the game praised for it's sense of humor and voice acting and nearly universally panned for it's gameplay, and from everything I've read it had absolutely nothing that would appeal to Bard's Tale fans except the name. I could be horribly mistaken, but I kind of doubt that anyone from the BT era of gaming would really care or did care about the type of simplified linear action that the remake offered.

I agree with the writer's point and don't think the BT remark is that big a deal really, but taken by itself it seems to reflect a view that a lot of developers seem to have: That it's about nostalgia, not actual gameplay. Seperate the two and you quickly find out how little the name by itself actually means to the fan base. People care about old games getting new life because they had fun playing them and hope that fun will be recreated, and that's it.

Take the upcoming Shadowrun game as a more modern example: very vocal and enthusiastic fan base is overjoyed when they hear the game is getting new life. Details slowly emerge, and it turns out that the game has almost nothing in common with the Shadowrun game that caused them to be vocal and enthusiastic fans except for the name. Now read any Shadowrun thread - are they still enthusiastic about the game, or are they pissed off and complaining? The name "Shadowrun" doesn't carry much weight with any fans of the game if it isn't accompanied by the gameplay that they associate with the name "Shadowrun". It's the same for any "old" game - throw away nearly everything but the name and you've also thrown out nearly your whole fan base.
 
I played the Bard's demo, and god did it sucked!

Funny dialogues though, i didn't knew Fargo had a sense of self-irony.


Bioshock RULEZ!!!!!!

The immediate think you notice about the BioShock E3 demo is its art style. This is not your typical industrial sci-fi look for a game but a title that has its inspirations in the 1930's art deco movement with highly graphic lines and colorful textures, not to mention the old fashioned and humorous ads that you see inside the complex. And this particular compled you find yourself in is actually underwater were you have stumbled into some kind of social experiment that has gone horribly wrong. Mutants are not roaming free and using what the game called "Adam", a substance that can change a person and give it extra abiltiies but at the cost of losing their humanity.
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mortiz said:
Wow, nice bit of journalism there [/sarcasm]. The world would be a happier place if the gaming press suddenly decided to do actual, shock horror, research into what they're typing up. In all honesty, how long does it take to visit NMA or DAC and put a finger on the pulse of the Fallout community? You'd have to be pretty incompetent to miss one of the many threads on the subject at NMA alone.
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He said 'should,' which is an important distinction. I believe it implies he is aware of dissent on the issue, though he doesn't agree with the sentiment. I doubt he wanted to get into the issue as it is a digression from the core point of his article.

Hey! Kharn, no credit? :wink:
 
Bioshock sounds too good to be true.I want to get exited about it but I am afraid that all of my expectations might be shot down and just turn out to be over-hyped lies.
 
The Bard's Tale was a pile of shit. Oblivion was a massive dissappointment. The Escapist should stick to long essays on theoretical ludology, because they don't know jack about actual games.
 
Actually, after reading the whole issue, I must admit, that they do know what they write about. And don't forget, Pajari, that each article is influenced by the writer's own views.
 
I think Montez has it exactly right. Business people think in terms of "brands", and a game franchise is just that to them. Treating games like other consumer products, they believe that gamers are loyal to brands and thus they can stick the label on anything and sell it.
 
octotron said:
I think Montez has it exactly right. Business people think in terms of "brands", and a game franchise is just that to them. Treating games like other consumer products, they believe that gamers are loyal to brands and thus they can stick the label on anything and sell it.
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Let's explore that concept a bit. What makes a sequel a sequel? Why, for example, could Fallout 2 be called "Fallout 2" and not some other name? What's the core of its link to Fallout?

I believe that it is the setting. An engine is simply a method of content delivery. Any other game made with the same engine wouldn't be Fallout 2 unless it could directly connect to the world, if not the events, of Fallout.

In this fashion, Fallout: Tactics, even though the engine was different and the storyline was not connected to the other games, could be called Fallout because it still happened in the same setting. It not only occurs in the same world, the same continent, it occurs within the same literary area: Fallout is a story about post-apocalyptic '50s America and both games relate to the topic.

In the same vein, Fallout: BOS is a Fallout game. It occurs in the same setting as the others. It's not a good game, mind, but that just goes to show that membership in a series does not ensure any kind of quality.

Therefore, I do not think it's accurate to say that Fallout 3 is simply "frachising". If we get a vaguely post-apocalyptic game with no real connection to the themes present in the Fallout setting, then it's franchising. But until we see the end result we can't tell if it's a marketting gimmick or not.
 
Very true. However, there are a lot more things than just the setting that created Fallout. It was also the gameplay, and several things (including viewpoint, character system and combat) are what made Fallout Fallout. Which is why you can easily say that Fallout: BoS is at most an extremely crappy Fallout game, and that Tactics is a decent tactical game but not one fitting to Fallout.
 
Sander said:
Very true. However, there are a lot more things than just the setting that created Fallout. It was also the gameplay, and several things (including viewpoint, character system and combat) are what made Fallout Fallout. Which is why you can easily say that Fallout: BoS is at most an extremely crappy Fallout game, and that Tactics is a decent tactical game but not one fitting to Fallout.
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I agree: the entire "fallout experience" contributed to defining the genre. But I believe that if a developer keeps the setting the same it's still a "fallout" game, rather than franchising. This doesn't mean that any "fallout" game that is missing the rest of the "fallout" experience: story, engine, character system, etc. will be any good ;) But at least I can pray to Pipboy that He deliver us from shoddy sequels.
 
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