At 11/25/09 02:51 PM, Xeptic wrote:

At 11/25/09 02:23 PM, Paranoia wrote:

At 11/25/09 12:10 PM, Xeptic wrote: If a game is played by millions of people, it's not a bad game

Bull.

Explain yourself. IMO It's not bull. It just depends on your definition of a good game. Millions of people play Farmville, or whatever it's called, so someone did something right there. That makes it a good game/concept in my opinion. It apparently has a quality that makes the game very appealing to a huge crowd. Not ever having played the game I can't say what that quality is, but it's there.

Farmville is formula-built. Zynga's marketing department pulled out calculators and decided what numbers to pump into the game to ensure maximum profit.

It's simple really, ADDICTION is not the same as FUN. People have a psychological need to "complete" things and accomplish goals.

i.e. what I made with edmund earlier in the year:

• Unsuitable Submission

  This submission contains age-rated material and requires an account to view.

It is NOT a good game by any measure. It's a formula, how long can we get people to play a pointless game for. People completed the game too! Just read the reviews, people complete it and still give it a bad score cause it's "stupid".

This is EXACTLY what Zynga is doing. They are getting people to play a dumb game for longer than they would like to.

I listened to a rep from their company talk about how they make games at the flash gaming summit. Their secret? They build one game that they can reskin to different themes. If someone else's game with a theme starts getting popular, Zynga notes the trend and skins their engine for that theme.

It's 100% marketing.

A product can be successful but not be quality. I have a vizio TV. It's an extremely successful brand (cause it's cheap).

Had it for 2 years. Recently it's been freezing, and not responding to the remote or button presses while frozen (unplugging it and plugging it back in fixes it). The warranty is up. It's quality is not good, but it's an extremely successful brand.

At 11/25/09 07:54 PM, Glaiel-Gamer wrote: Farmville stinks

I'm not too sure about that. I think a lot of people are entertained by Farmville. Just because the company who made it is manipulative doesn't mean people don't find it fun. Heck, there are plenty of great games that I played where I wasn't even having fun all the time. Sometimes I was pissed and kept trying to beat some ridiculous boss because I had a human need to complete things.

Games are meant to entertain, and if people are buying these games, it's probably because they are entertained by them. If I like a game, I don't care what anybody else says about it, it's fun for me and I'd have to be daft to deny myself of something I like just because it's not up to the standards of others.

my theory on why farmville is so popular. Okay, I think it's just the fact that people LOOOOOOVEEE using the dumb little apps in facebook, although they can go to another website and just play great games in a matter of seconds. It's like how people like to have comforts of having everything in their room so they don't have to leave. Well, that's part number one. It's not exactly the gameplay that shines out to people it's the socializing aspect. I send an invite to everyone and they add a chicken or something. That makes it bigger, and the farmville just spread to everyone else. It's just addicting, so you can get more and more animals, and showing off and stuff.

it goes on from there. It's just the accomplishment from getting great stats that keeps it going.

It's just my theory, feel free to shoot it down.

I think people just have a natural connection to games
where you level up until you reach the end. Finishing
the game is way more important than having fun, and
if you can customize your progress through different
stats you have and whatever, that only makes it better.

In their brain it's just a matter of seeing how deep the
rabbit hole goes, not having the time of their life.
Today, for instance, I played the new game of the week.

• 

  Level Up!

  by titch007uk

  Sandbox Platform RPG Comedy - Run, jump, collect gems and talk to zany NPC's to level up!

  Game

  2,057,503 Views

  (Ages 13+)

It was very entertaining; I'm a fan of RPG games normally,
but being able to level up pretty much anything (even idling)
just made my stat-whore senses tingle with joy.
However, in the game you fall asleep and have a nightmare
where some demonic creature attacks you, and you have
to do your best to defeat him without much instruction.
It's pretty difficult (especially the first time) but once you
lose you also somehow loose all your stats when you
wake up the very next morning.

That I absolutely hated. But I kept playing.

Soon though it just felt like a rush to level up until
you fell asleep. After a third loss to the stupid nightmare,
and a third loss of all my hard earned stats, I quit the game.

I could have very well lost my entire afternoon to the game
if you didn't lose your levels after a loss to the nightmare.
So I think that shows that people, and myself, love a game
where your progress is shown with extreme distinction.

At 11/25/09 09:10 PM, K-Guare wrote: lvl up the game!!!!

I loved it, but I couldn't find some last few gems since the gems restart everytime you lose to the nightmare, I was only able to beat him once thanks to a glitch.

WHO'S GONNA BE AROUND ON FRIDAY?

At 11/25/09 10:38 PM, Kirk-Cocaine wrote: WHO'S GONNA BE AROUND ON FRIDAY?

you know I am... ;D

At 11/25/09 10:44 PM, turtleco wrote:

At 11/25/09 10:38 PM, Kirk-Cocaine wrote: WHO'S GONNA BE AROUND ON FRIDAY?

you know I am... ;D

Cool.

At 11/25/09 10:38 PM, Kirk-Cocaine wrote: WHO'S GONNA BE AROUND ON FRIDAY?

What's on friday?

oh shit, totally forgot about it lol, i'm in london... but current plans gives me going to my girlfriends for the weekend from friday afternoon... hmmm

I've also got other plans on sunday evening too lol... are people still around on monday when i'm actually going to be free?

At 11/26/09 02:45 AM, dELtaluca wrote: I've also got other plans on sunday evening too lol... are people still around on monday when i'm actually going to be free?

oh wait, i'm busy monday too :| eeehm, oh well shit.

Re:Level Up
I'll get Duncan to write up his thoughts on Level Up and put them somewhere. He did it partly as a critique on grinding in rpg games if I remember correctly.

I love all the hate people have for Shadow, considering the fact you don't actually need to ever fight her to win the game...

At 11/25/09 10:38 PM, Kirk-Cocaine wrote: WHO'S GONNA BE AROUND ON FRIDAY?

Not me. My financial situation isn't great and I have lots of work to do, so I am glad I never committed ^_^ That is if it's the thing I'm thinking of and by deltas wordsies I'm sure I'm right and I'm pretty sure that's this month.

At 11/26/09 04:28 AM, KaynSlamdyke wrote: I love all the hate people have for Shadow, considering the fact you don't actually need to ever fight her to win the game...

I loved the game, but the nightmare sequence comes out of nowhere and there's no instruction on what it is.. that annoyed me :P Does it last a predefined amount of time or something? (Yes, I closed the game after a good 3 minutes of 'huh? wha?').

At 11/26/09 07:13 AM, liaaaam wrote: I loved the game, but the nightmare sequence comes out of nowhere and there's no instruction on what it is.. that annoyed me :P Does it last a predefined amount of time or something? (Yes, I closed the game after a good 3 minutes of 'huh? wha?').

You get instructions on how to beat her after fighting her for the first time in the Codex. You effectively have to make her walk into her own meteorites, and collect the black gems she drops. I believe this was done so that you have to use every single one of your core six skills (running, jumping, taking damage, healing, collecting and health/relationship) in the boss fight.

Of course, she levels up during the fight too. Which makes her attack patterns a bit tougher to get around. Dash certainly helps for the invulnerability after taking the first blow feature, as does double jump and Hardy for just plain getting out of the way. Ultimately though, it's designed to be as frustrating as possible - it's a nightmare after all. Fortunately your Knowledge skill and your Sleep skill don't drop if you lose to her, giving you more time to level up at a faster rate even if you do fail. Par for completing the game is about Day 3 (which is what I managed to get in testing. Still haven't beaten Shadow yet either).

I'll be in Dublin this weekend, to do, well I'm not sure yet what I'm gonna do. Going to see a friend who studies there. Besides drinking, anything interesting I should do there?

At 11/25/09 07:54 PM, Glaiel-Gamer wrote: It's 100% marketing.

Bingo, even the Farmville CEO admits to it. Dunno how business saavy their ceo is but he doesnt seem to do pr that well. 'I knew that i wanted to control my destiny, so I knew I needed revenues, right, fucking, now. Like I needed revenues now. So I funded the company myself but I did every horrible thing in the book to, just to get revenues right away.'

Anyway long story short they are fighting some sort of lawsuit right now for their scammy ads so maybe that 1 billion was short lived.

I have no idea what's supposed to be going on, but by complete co-incidence I'm in London raising money for charity on Saturday :p

At 11/25/09 02:51 PM, Xeptic wrote:

At 11/25/09 02:23 PM, Paranoia wrote:

At 11/25/09 12:10 PM, Xeptic wrote: If a game is played by millions of people, it's not a bad game

Bull.

Explain yourself. IMO It's not bull. It just depends on your definition of a good game.

You have to be a pretty fundamentalist capitalist to claim that how good a game is is just proportional to how much money it makes. Especially in a creative scene like this, quality and profitability aren't exactly comfortable together.

At 11/26/09 08:59 AM, Paranoia wrote: You have to be a pretty fundamentalist capitalist to claim that how good a game is is just proportional to how much money it makes. Especially in a creative scene like this, quality and profitability aren't exactly comfortable together.

I never claimed a game's quality is proportional to how much money it makes, in fact I have no idea how much money Farmville made the developers. What I said is that the amount of people play a game has some sort of linkage with its qualities. And in my defense, you people have a narrower (more artistic/creative) scope of a 'good game' than I do. Apparently Farmville has some sort of addictiveness to it, which imo is a quality as well.

Besides, I never agreed with the fact so many people seem to think it's an enjoyable game. I'd rather play something that's more creative/artistic, where you can see the developers spend tons of effort and sprinkled copious amounts of love on their product (like Okami, Ico or Uncharted). Just wanted to get the point across that a game being either good or bad isn't as black and white as some of you make it sound.

At 11/26/09 04:28 AM, KaynSlamdyke wrote: I love all the hate people have for Shadow, considering the fact you don't actually need to ever fight her to win the game...

yeah, you can beat the game in like a minute or so. Then nightmare sequence really isn't that hard, it's just something you have to get used to. But I've really been lovin' the games Tom posted yesterday.

At 11/26/09 08:55 AM, Luis wrote: Anyway long story short they are fighting some sort of lawsuit right now for their scammy ads so maybe that 1 billion was short lived.

that's what all facebook apps are about.

So, uh, how's Thanksgiving been for all you blokes?

LOL

At 11/26/09 11:28 AM, K-Guare wrote: So, uh, how's Thanksgiving been for all you blokes?

fine and dandy if I do say so myself.

LOL

speaking of lol (segway...) I like ur sig, it's funny how one of the things say "U-areKG" as in "you are KG"

At 11/26/09 11:45 AM, turtleco wrote: speaking of lol (segway...) I like ur sig, it's funny how one of the things say "U-areKG" as in "you are KG"

Cool.

</standard turtleco reply>

At 11/26/09 01:33 PM, K-Guare wrote: Cool.

God damn, I hate it when my post starts a new page.

At 11/26/09 01:36 PM, K-Guare wrote:

At 11/26/09 01:33 PM, K-Guare wrote: Cool.

God damn, I hate it when my post starts a new page.

How come? The person visiting this page will see you first.

At 11/26/09 01:38 PM, bl00db47h wrote: How come? The person visiting this page will see you first.

This may surprise you, but there are some people in this world who aren't attention whores. It's crazy right?

At 11/26/09 01:49 PM, Toast wrote:

At 11/26/09 01:38 PM, bl00db47h wrote: How come? The person visiting this page will see you first.

This may surprise you, but there are some people in this world who aren't attention whores. It's crazy right?

Holy crap it is.

At 11/26/09 01:49 PM, Toast wrote: This may surprise you, but there are some people in this world who aren't attention whores. It's crazy right?

I'm a little too shy to just try to call attention
to my posts and whatnot every hour of the day.
I'm pretty outgoing at events with my friends and whatnot, though.
So I'm not a total party killer.

At 11/26/09 01:49 PM, Toast wrote:

At 11/26/09 01:38 PM, bl00db47h wrote: How come? The person visiting this page will see you first.

This may surprise you, but there are some people in this world who aren't attention whores. It's crazy right?

Why did you go out of your way to act rude? Couldn't you have just as easily said 'He might not like the attention'?

I personally don't like having the first post because it makes me feel like I'm talking to myself and not part of the earlier conversation.

anyone else see this flash ad on newgrounds? I think it's a bit disturbing.