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Comments
I think it's extremely important not to think of VNs as games, and not just because of the obvious differences, but for marketing reasons, because they're never going to break out of their niche otherwise.
After all, if you stick them in the games section of a store, the people who go into that section will be looking for something entirely different, and by and large, they won't buy any VNs. It's the same reason you don't put comic books in the novels section.
Now, I agree that some things can be both visual novels and games (e.g. Persona), but a VN with a couple of dialog choices is a game to the same extent that a movie on DVD with an alternate ending is: you can make the case that it has game elements, and your logic would be sound, but calling it that would give people unfamiliar with it the wrong idea entirely.
I think people looking to buy a movie or a novel or a comic book or whatever are just as unlikely if not more unlikely to buy a visual novel, so unless you're proposing that stores start having visual novel sections, I would think putting them with games is the way to go.
Visual novels have a pretty heavy association with pornography at the moment, at least in the minds of most, so it probably won't happen either way. If it were, though, I think they'd need their own section. Dispersing visual novels amongst the game boxes would just seem kinda strange, since they provide such a different experience when compared to a conventional game.
This article is a fantastic and more than a little bit depressing read, and anyone who still inexplicably has an interest in getting a job in the industry should read it.
Bought some games. All German, now that I think about it. The first one is the gold edition of Drakensang: River of Time (or whatever it's called in English) with it's add-on. It's based on the most (in)famous German P&P RPG, only recently I had the pleasure to actually properly play it for the first time.
The second is the Gothic Complete Collection (all three Gothic games with add-ons). I wanted to try the second game again, so that was quite appropriate. I have no idea if the third games comes with the Community Patch applied, but I hope so. I'm not in the mood for killer boars of doom, that can kill a hardened veteran with little effort, crashes when I want to save a game, my character vanishing (but not his equipment), when I load a game (when the saving process didn't crash) and whatever else made the game a joke on release.
However, there are some issues. First of all, the labeling of the three DVDs is off. The third DVD is only labeled with as Gothic 3 add-on, even though it also contains the Gothic 2 main game. While the labeling of the second DVD leads one to believe that it contains the G2 main game, add-on and the entire Gothic 2 package. And it indeed has the last thing, which leads me to another labeling issue. In the Autorun menu, there is no Gothic 2 Gold. Only Gothic 2: Night of the Raven (the add-on), leading one to believe that it doesn't have the gold version and that the main game and the add-on have to be installed separately. But the thing that is labeled "Gothic 2: Night of the Raven" is actually the gold version, which also makes the main game on the third DVD completely pointless.
Also, G2 is a hassle to run. Now, at least they say in the readme how to get it to run under Windows 7 (it has to be started two times, afterwards the "rundll32.exe" process has to be killed). However, as soon as I left the tower at the beginning, I experienced serious graphical issues, that forced me to quite the game. If it weren't for that site, I wouldn't be able to play it.
At least, the box is nice and there are some nice goodies. Like postcards, two posters, some sticker, a Gothic 3 artbook and a Making-Of DVD. But I'd preferred better modern OS compatibility, or at least full instructions (and files) on how to run it properly and non-confusing labeling.
I didn't play much afterwards. But it wasn't so bad. Got into two fights. The first one (against a wolf) was pretty bad since I couldn't see it, because my character blocked my view (I should try not to fight enemies downhill), but the second (against a bandit) went surprisingly well, with only few damage on my part. Much better than I expected, due to my past experiences, and I even used the old "hold CTRL and press an arrow key" controls. The key was not just to wildly swing the weapon, but also evading attacks and trying to find a good opportunity to attack. Pretty obvious, but I think games like Oblivion spoiled me too much (and I guess Demon's Souls prepared me quite a bit).
Fun fact: Branches are stronger than daggers.
...Damn, that is long. And I haven't even said anything about the games I got yesterday...
Aren't there four? >.>
Nobody cares about the fourth one. :P
Bought Arkham City. Now to wait forever for it to download.
This is the kind of horror story you hear about all too often, unfortunately. These guys did the right thing, time and time again, and they got burned for it. But you need developers like that and stories like that so the suits can't get away with all their bullshit, and now we have things like Kickstarter, Steam as a publishing platform and so on and so forth.
While those things are great contributors to a possible solution, other things have to change, even if they're the least likely things to change. As long as people buy games based on brand power alone or other such factors, publishers will continue to insist on pushing out shoddy games made at the detriment of developers because it makes them cash. We can hope for change in the industry as much as we like, but it really has to begin with us as consumers spending our money based at least partially on the politics of the game industry. It's how we vote. Even if we can't drown out the Madden re-releases, the Call of Duty sequels or World of Warcraft copycats, we can do our best to make whatever difference we can. And that means making informed choices about where you put your money.
For instance? Don't rent, and don't buy second hand. If a game is available over Steam, you'll actually end up paying the developers more of your money even if the game actually costs less, because Steam doesn't have physical distribution costs and sometimes even the publisher can be bypassed. Instead, Valve gets a cut of the profits and the rest goes to the actual developers. If you've got a choice between getting a game you want by EA/Activision/whoever and another game you want published by a more benign company, choose the latter. These are all pretty minor things and still allow you to play the games you want to play.
Also? Kickstarter is a godsend. You don't actually have any money taken from you unless the project reaches its funding goal, so your money isn't at risk as long as the project has a reputable founding. We have a thread here for it and there are some great projects on show, so I encourage you to support stuff you like, even if it's just a little. At the very least, even the minimum pledge generally nets you a copy of the game upon release and that's at much less than shelf price.
That's not entirely true. There are a few projects that were fully funded and collected the money, only for the developers to run out months later because they knew game design, but not finances.
Not that that should discourage people from using kickstarter; I'm just saying that throwing money around on it indiscriminately is (obviously) a bad idea.
Obviously, I'm not advocating unchecked investment into projects. But something like the Double Fine Adventure Game is a pretty safe bet, as is Banner Saga.
Also, I can't help but feel a little encouraged by the fact that this kind of failure has already occurred, because that means that future fallout of the concept is that much more unlikely. I know it's a bit strange, but it's good that people haven't turned away from the concept of a crowdfunded game because of instances like you mentioned.
It helps that for almost every donor, it's a very small amount of money.
Why wasn't this in Sonic Generations?
Considering how prolific it is in Drakensang, I guess Radon Labs really likes Bloom. I like it too, it's a nice little effect, but I think they went overboard there.
Yeah, I agree with you on that. At least, based on those screenshots, since I haven't played the game. Bloom is occasionally pretty nice-looking... but in those screenshots there's so much of it and all it seems to really do there is make everything look washed-out, and it otherwise looks like they were going for a more colorful aesthetic.
I'm still mad about Flying Battery Zone not being in Sonic Generations. :<
For marketing purposes I wouldn't call VNs games. They seem more akin to comic books and, well, fiction books in general; if I ran a bookstore I'd stock a few of them just for the niche audience.
It's a bit like the Marble Hill neighborhood. It used to be the northernmost part of Manhattan Island in New York City, but they rerouted Harlem River so that it would be easier for ships to use, so thus caused Marble Hill to be separated from Manhattan and joined to the Bronx. But it's still considered part of Manhattan borough, for governing purposes. Analogously, VNs are still games, but they are closer to books than to most games.
I still don't agree with this. Interactivity isn't an inherent part of the medium. There exist VNs that are games (like Persona and 999), but being a VN doesn't make something a game.
I just saw a girl I know setting "is in a relationship with Geralt of Rivia" as her relationship status on Facebook.
I found it quite interesting and unexpectable, but that made me think - why is gaming on any level beyond Facebook games viewed as a stereotypically male hobby and any women indulging in it are viewed as weird exceptions, when the truth is far from that? I thought that I should know better, since pretty much every girl of my age that I know has turned out to like playing video games (granted, from my observations, they usually spend less time on gaming than guys and are more focused on specific games, but still).
A lot of gender stereotypes are fairly arbitrary. For example, blue was the stereotypically girly color and pink the boyish color at one point.
That said, it's probably because a lot of games involve violence, and violence is supposedly something men do.
Madass: On the Elder Scrolls MMO - If I recall, Bethesda isn't making it
So I just started the Dead Money DLC for Fallout: New Vegas, and I'm already developing a deep loathing for radios.
Backtracking halfway across the entire map with one point of health, no healing items, no ammo, and both legs broken from bear traps you never saw coming wasn't fun, and it never will be.
I was watching one youtube video of a really girly girl describing her dorm room's many decorations, and one of the accessories (or whatever category you'd put it in) was actually a Wii with Animal Crossing.
Ah, Qurupeco, I hate your friends.
Rathian just swooped in to save its buddy from us capturing it.
So I just downloaded Tribes: Ascend, since I've been hearing so many good things about it. Anyone here play?
This is a good thing.
Also, I'm not sure if this has changed since I stopped playing, but prepare for Shazbot.