The point is I don't see what's wrong with emulating the movie industry... have the big mainstream hits, the big explosions, the action heroes... then also have the small guys, the Oscar winners, the emotional dramas, the unique and creative artistic projects.

There's no reason gaming can't follow that model, and actually hey guess what it does already. Yes Call of Duty Black Ops is the big mainstream deal this Fall, but you know what has gotten just as much press? Fucking Minecraft, a PC exclusive indie project. You know what pops up on Steam, Gamersgate and other such sites just as much if not more so than big mainstream games? Indie projects, small team projects, games from Eastern Europe and strategy titles... the gaming industry, especially the PC side of it, is amazingly eclectic.

When people complain that all we have now-a-days are console shooters it's because they're not looking for anything else. They're sitting on their couch watching ESPN waiting for the creative and innovative PC projects to come to them and that isn't going to happen. When all you expose yourself to is mainstream advertising then all you know about is mainstream games, that's common sense. When you limit yourself to games that look and play like they cost 100 million dollars to make all you're going to get are mainstream titles, that makes common sense too.

I love Call of Duty and I love Machinarium, there's no reason people can't like, purchase and support both.

Are you trying to argue with me? Because you just sort of proved my point. Yes, exactly as I said, mainstream devs don't innovate anymore. They just copy whatever has been successful in the past.

What's wrong with games imitating movies? Well, for one thing, games aren't movies. They're interactive. They're on a whole different level from movies. And yet constantly the mainstream tries to make them just like a different medium.. Mainstream movies don't try to be like books. Any good movie version of a book translates it's source material using the strengths of the moving picture medium. Video games on the other hand, especially mainstream video games, are constantly trying to be 'just like a movie'.

Yes, we get lots of small games on PC. That's because the PC is where games are developed and you can't release anything on the consoles without the consent of their manufacturers. All the mainstream devs besides ActiBlizzard and Valve have basically abandoned the PC and only develop console games which they port with a minimum of effort.

I'm asking why complain about mainstream games that try to be movies when there are tons and tons of alternatives? I like my mainstream games and I like my other stuff, there are plenty of PC games to go around. Yelling "garsh darn mainstream publishers making mainstream games!" makes no sense to me, that's their job, to appeal to the mainstream and sell a ton of copies. Smaller studios make different things, indie devs even more different things. Hooray!

Ok, I think I see the problem. I'm coming into this discussion with the assumption that mainstream developers are physically capable of doing anything original or creative since despite how things have come to be, they have in the past. You seem to think that they aren't. Obviously this is absurd. Mainstream devs don't do the same thing over and over and try to make games into movies because they can't do anything else. They do it because it's easy and they can easily manipulate the mainstream audience into making it profitable.

Honestly I consider that to be in the same league than the "DRM are evil, let's use them everywhere anyway" cute talks from Gabe or the Blizzard guy, that's nice... but it would be better is there was actually ANY action following. Saying "PC are the future of gaming... but all my new games are going to be console-first projects" doesn't really help anything.

Well yes and no, it works for both games and movies but at one condition :

If you like, on one side big budget FPS and on the other side of the spectrum niche indy games, then fine the problem arise when you want something in between.

If you want more "PCish" (for the lack of a better work) FPS like NOLF2 (which I still consider much better than Bioshock in the FPS with light RPG element category)
If you want adventure games with some challenge (no the finished in two hours telltale ones)
If you want Baldurs Gate like RPG (I had some hope than Dragon Age would the beginning of a new trend it failed and Bioware decided to go back to Console-first approach for the next one)

The kind of games that Indy producer don't have enough resources to make but that bigger companies will never make because they are too much of a financial risk.

And the same is also true for Movies, you have on one side dumb big budget blockbuster and on the other more niche drama and psychological thing.

That's nice but if you want a SF film with watchable special effects and a good plot..... well forget about cinema and start reading books.

No, they always did games to appeal to the most people possible. It's just that before that was 100,000 computer nerds and now it's 100 million teenagers, fratboys and soccer moms. The market has changed.


I think you are doing indie and small development teams a great disservice here. Have you seen Zeno Clash? Have you seen STALKER? Have you seen Dead State? Have you seen Risen?

Indie/small team/Eastern Europe doesn't always mean two guys in a basement. Sometimes it does, and we get Eschalon and Avernum and Machinarium, but sometimes it means half a dozen guys or more working really hard to appeal to a smaller fanbase. That's the important part, they are targeting a smaller fanbase and therefore can make a more niche game. EA, Ubisoft, 2K Games... these publishers are targeting the mainstream gamer, the Call of Duty gamer... they are trying to sell millions of copies and budgeting to match. You cannot make a niche title when you do that, when you have those budgets. If you ran those companies you wouldn't either. It seems like you want them to spend 100 million dollars on a PC exclusive turn-based RPG, which is retarded, no one would do that.

There are plenty of alternatives to 100 million dollar mainstream games though, thankfully.

What do you mean "No"? You aren't even disagreeing with anything I said.

http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2012/06/08/crykey-crytek-moving-to-f2p-for-good/

Well looks like its good bye to Crytek. Hope they tank it to be blunt. F*ck F2P.

Don't they license their engines? I think that's probably more informative than sales numbers of their own games.
I played WOW from launch through TBC and fully half their patches sucked horrible ass, quality wise. In fact the 3.0 patch fuck up is what made me quit.

i just wanna wish CryTek good look with their plans. they'll need it. sounds like a surefire way to ruin yourself...

Hahaha, well, at least someone is being honest about Mr. Levine.

To the rest of you: This is the man that brought SecuROM in it's new, limited activation form to you, he thinks Steam is the greatest and for much the same reason. I guarantee you whatever PC gaming nirvana this guy has in his head, you probably WILL NOT like very much (renting 80 USD games off of an On Live type service no doubt). Just because he's saying how great the PC is and you happen to agree, I think you're all not really looking where this guy is actually coming from.
What we gave up was worth it, PC developers were busy making a PC gaming an even more miserable mess than it had been before, with limited activations and other worse kinds of DRM, etc. The dedicated servers were on their way out already. What did we actually give up? Better graphics and modding, both of which don't matter all that much to shooters (they're nice, but not critical). We got a lot more than that in return.

Where's he been all these years? Living under a rock? "F2P" and Pay2Win is horrible and I avoid all of them. Guess I won't be getting their future games.

Look up Onlive which is done so crappier computers can usualy play pc gaming through online streaming like yhoutube. . the biggest problem with streaming games though it pretty much revolves around DRM since you have to be connected to the service constantly thus if onilve dies, no more games. Also, you need a fast internet connection and stuff like the resolution isn't as good as on an actual gaming PC.
Profit is different than actually good products. free2play makes tons of money. Look up how rich Zynga is with things like farmville.

I myself want most more 2d rpgs for crappy pc without real graphics cards. lol and I mean truly great ones like Fallout or Planescape: Torment. (I'm not even sure if those games ever stopped being profitable they just seemed to stop being made when OOH We CAN MAKE games super 3d graphics and make tons of money. and see what happens to the makers of chrysis games? (note I didn't read the actual link so I have no idea what the dude is complaining about exactly) I may be wrong here but I think the developer Spiderweb software makes profit off their 2d RPGs even though they sell way less copies. I think developers should maybe rely more on games that can be more creative and need less copies sold to make a profit in the first place.

This is absolutely true. Likewise the complaints that there's "no good games anymore"
are just bunk, if one doesn't like anything coming out of an industry pumping out at least 10 times the volume of games they used to produce then one is failing to look terribly hard.