Interplay vs Bethesda Fallout: Indigo Gaming

Originally Posted by ChienAboyeur
More importantly, the ugoigo pattern is one of the simplest pattern in gaming. Players who can play other things are able to play ugoigo. The reverse is not true.

I love how often you repeat this ridiculous assertion, makes me laugh everytime. Yeah, people who loved JA2, Fallout1/2, ToEE, and whatever else hate, say, PoE because RTwP is too hard, or FO4 because twitch action combat is too hard!

Originally Posted by Alrik Fassbauer
Yes, and that despite other ways being possible., It only requires a bit more programming.

In my opinion, they are and always were so much combat-oriented, because that's what a male player would expect from a game of getting into power. You just don't amass power by helping poor people. You do so by being ruthless, either being in economy, politics or in combat. Altrusim never helped sopmeone getting into a position of power, that's why games were never considered to have this. In a male world, it's all about competition, not about altruism.

No. Getting in power and remaining in power might also go with helping people, understanding them , providing them with what they want is one way to get their support. Empathy might be powerful tool to get into power.

The other point I think of is that this is in my opinion very much of an cultural expert from the U.S. into the rest of the world. From the U.S. where using violence to "make peace" is fully accepted by society. That outcry of black citizens about white policemen shooting innocent citizens is just the newest addition of that . People slowly begin to realize that violens as means to solve conflicts can create more dead participants than if another method than shooting was used.

But shooting others to solve a conflict is far, far, far too deep, deep, deep embedded into U.S. culture now, that's why you'öll never ever see C-RPGs with being entirely combat-less.

That is one point. The US indeed made a lot to advertize for one way to be in power. This is not power related though. Power is neutral to this regard. A decision was made to go for one way to exert power, a way centered on unilateral positioning, dismissing the other people.

This is indeed what players desire to play when they get their power trip fix through vid products. They want to impose their will, their own rules, their own codes onto others. There is no room for any other expression than theirs. NPCs are expected to be shallow, mere mirrors to the player's wishes.

One dev came on this site to promote his product: it was supposed to be about being an emperor. As emperors were, that is people taking into account other people.
At that time, it was pointed out that players did not want that, they do not want to be an emperor, they want absolute power, they want to impose their own views and leave no room for other views to exist.

It is not about power, it is about a certain vision on and exercize on power.

Fallout 3 and 4 are great, but they are just Bethesda games. And Bethesda games are all the same games with a different coat of paint. I think I played enough of them, and if the new one isn't radically different, I don't see myself playing it. They can start by changing the engine to something less clunky. But I just don't see that happening since current model is greatly profitable for them.

Originally Posted by Stingray
I love how often you repeat this ridiculous assertion, makes me laugh everytime. Yeah, people who loved JA2, Fallout1/2, ToEE, and whatever else hate, say, PoE because RTwP is too hard, or FO4 because twitch action combat is too hard!

It is a high quality to be able to laugh at common, plain observationss.
As daily life is full of common, plain observations, it makes a life full of laughters.

Beside, it is not about liking it or not liking it, loving or hating it (once again apart from showing an inability to abstract one's tastes)

In this case, it simply means that people happen to like the simplest pattern in gaming over less simple patterns they dislike.

For sure. The reason people like turn-based combat is because it's so much simpler than, say, shooter combat. Seems legit!

Originally Posted by crpgnut
I played Deus Ex: Human Revolution without killing a soul. I killed only a few people in Deus Ex: Mankind Divided too. I didn't kill a single human in Prey either. Okay…there is a reason for that on the last one.

A byproduct of stealth approach.It changes nothing fundamentally. It is the pursuit of the same goals through different means.
Same power trip: players are so powerful they can destroy everything existing or ignore everything existing.

Originally Posted by Stingray
For sure. The reason people like turn-based combat is because it's so much simpler than, say, shooter combat. Seems legit!

No. People like whatever they like for whatever reason that leads them to like.

It has nothing to do with simple, complicated etc

More than anything, people liking a simple pattern product does not make it a complicated pattern product because people wish they could play complicated pattern product when they cant.

Originally Posted by ChienAboyeur
A byproduct of stealth approach.It changes nothing fundamentally. It is the pursuit of the same goals through different means.
Same power trip: players are so powerful they can destroy everything existing or ignore everything existing.

It's not about the destination, it's about the journey. If you play a game and the only thing that matters to you is a final cutscene, why play it at all? Why not just watch the cutscene on Youtube or something?

I am not sure what it means but ChienAboyeur is making a lot of sense lately.

Originally Posted by ChienAboyeur
FO1 and 2 were released roughly 20 years ago. On this site, this gives an age bracket for people who played them around release.

People played them in their late teens to early fourties. With a concentration in late teens to early thirties.

Basically, the targeted audience has not changed since the vid industry focuses people in their late teens to early thirties.

Simplification also does not hold because of younger age: younger players have time and dedication to learn and command a complex set of rules.

The simplification might happen because studios sold a franchise and wanted to bank on the previous episodes fame. Players who played FA 1 on release at 25 were nearly 40 years old when they played FO 3.

More importantly, the ugoigo pattern is one of the simplest pattern in gaming. Players who can play other things are able to play ugoigo. The reverse is not true.

I never said than simplification in the RPG was due to age. Simplification is due to going mainstream, adding much more FPS components and having no more reason in this case to "waste" studio resources around choices and different paths. Actually it is even worst, too much text or exposition breaks the flow and the rhythm of the game.

However having a younger public have removed lot of possible thematic in this kind of game though. Looking at Fallout IV for example you may be authorized to think than one of the consequences of the nuclear bombing is the total annihilation of the sex industry or any sex reference and you may marvel to the fact than there is not a widespread use of slaves even if the society lacks of mechanized tools while still having huge repetitive and heavy work to do.
And since there is not anymore any authority in a high position to enforce Law or some Morale you may conclude than those Raiders, who shoot on everyone on sight instead of trying to take advantage of those bodies in a way or in another, are maybe morally superior to any pre industrial warlord.

A discussion on the "streamlining" of video games seems flawed from the get-go if you fail to realize that the 18-40 year olds of today are not the same 18-40 year olds of 20 years ago.

With the advent of the internet and smartphones, developers have to design around an increasingly distracted audience.

Really? Care to name a FPS and RPG designed with that in mind?

Originally Posted by Drithius
Well, given the laughing stock reception Bethesda got with Fallout 4, I hope they disappear as well once they, yet again, fail to evolve for their next game. You can only suck the marrow from a rotting corpse for so long and, if the reviews for FO4 are any hint, that time is quickly drawling to a close.

But, then again, if Michael Bay can be a successful director, rationality doesn't necessarily matter when it comes to $100 million mass marketing and the consumerism that goes along with it.

Not only do I agree 100%, this was very entertaining to read. You put it in a very funny way.

It's a different market now, no doubt about it. Dirthius made an important point.

However I don't want to sugar coat it and only say, times have changed. We should be more specific. Audience standard isn't just different, it has dropped. Expectations have evaporated, patience has eroded. No one wants to take on archaic interfaces, read much text, or get his ass handed to him. They prefer cheap thrills, oozing graphics, quick rewards. They want the game to fellate them. All that stems from educational and cultural decline.

In any case, I think, however you twist and turn it, Bethesda had dumbed-down what was once Interplay's. Adapted is an euphemism. Furthermore I refuse to believe that an opposite process doesn't exist i.e. smartening games. It can be done. And it wouldn't butcher your profits as much as people think it would.

The audience isn't distracted so much as evolved. Remember, evolution isn't necessarily better - it just is, and the old WILL get left behind as part of the process.

It really depends on who you are as a person. Some people think the old ways will always be better - and they will refuse to evolve with the world around them.

That said, such people are rare. Most of the "old-schoolers" actually evolve in several ways - they just don't really notice it.

Meaning, they can live with certain parts of the design evolution - but not others, yet they're not really aware of their own preferences to the extent that they understand that streamlining in itself isn't the problem - it's the perception of it.

There are good ways to streamline and there are bad ways to streamline. The mainstream audience isn't just a bunch of idiots - like the most ignorant old-schooler would have you believe. They're just an expanded audience - and they're a product of whatever they've been exposed to in terms of the evolution.

Disliking a streamlined design because it's streamlined is the same old stupidity of making your preferences into a principle. It will make you stupid.

Originally Posted by NewDArt
The audience isn't distracted so much as evolved. Remember, evolution isn't necessarily better…

In which case it is referred to as devolution.

Originally Posted by luj1
In which case it is referred to as devolution.

No, it has nothing to do with value. It has to do with survival through adaption.

Modern game design has adapted to the modern audience. Survival, in this case - would be about profit.

As such, a game like Skyrim is evolved by an order of magnitude in comparison to pretty much any old-school RPG you care to mention.

But it's not necessarily better or worse. That would depend on the individual only - as there's no objective way to establish overall quality.

Originally Posted by NewDArt
Modern game design has adapted to the modern audience. Survival, in this case - would be about profit.

You're absolutely right d'Art.

There is no reason for customers to care about sales however. Or to defend someone else's business decisions with something which has no impact on their end. Oh poor companies, they just wanted some profit. Well I am such an asshole customer, I should buy everything!

Originally Posted by luj1
You're absolutely right d'Art.

There is no reason for customers to care about sales however. Or justify business decisions with something which has no impact on them. Oh poor companies, they just wanted some profit. Well I am such an asshole customer, I should buy everything!

I fully understand that you're not the sort of person who's particularly interested in how people operate or their motivations.

That would require some kind of empathy or an area of interest that goes beyond yourself.

There are plenty of examples of mainstream popular games that require a lot of time/investment and (extensive) player understanding of gameplay mechanics…far more than for most (c)rpgs which were more a matter of offering wide amount of options for player expression.

Bethesda's real problem isn't "dumbing down" ( though they're moving away from classical rpg design with strict restrictions for defining player character…but this you can trace all the way back from Morrowind).

It's their "appeal to all", McDonalds approach, resulting in incoherent, jumbled mess of game without clear gameplay/narrative direction… from conflicting gameplay mechanics ( combat, survival, resource management, etc), to how it's narrative and setting/world is designed( Witcher, early Fallouts, etc).

I wouldn't even mind their less traditional rpg, "more immersive Sim"+amusement park exploration approach to Fallout if they were actually good at it…but (unlike with Arkane/Deus Ex), discovery adds almost nothing of real value to the world and there is little meaningful interaction with it.