Originally posted by Quizzical

T

Now, OnLive will deliver a better experience than having a game not playable at all for people with ancient computers like the original poster.  But look who that means their customers are:  people who can't pay for computer stuff.  Almost axiomatically, OnLive's customer base is restricted to people who can't afford a computer with modern integrated graphics, or an older gaming system that is at least competitive with modern integrated graphics.  Think there's a lot of money to be made off of such people?  I don't.

Economics of scale. 

Poor people have less money as individuals, but there are more of them. They can't afford to shell out for a shiney new console or mid range computer, but they CAN shell out seven bucks every couple of weeks to play a few games now and then. The movie rental business remains around primarily due to this fact. That's why at some places you can rent movies for $1 for a whole week. Netflix give you unlimited streaming movies and mail rentals for $8 a month. These people can't afford to buy a new movie for between $10 and $25, but they're more than willing to spend that same amount of money on a grocery bag full of movies to watch all week. The same thing applies here.

The "you plebs are too poor to be here" bullshit is just elitish posturing.

I did lose a little accuracy, but I'm not sure if that's because I was used to playing the XBox 360 version or the lag.

Overall, it was serviceable. And since this piece of shit is all that I have to game on right now, Onlive will do.

More to the point though, I'm pretty sure that this type of service is going to eventually replace the business model that we're currently using. I'm not entirely sure that I'm behind that, but as long as there are emulators, or services that provide retro games, I guess I can learn to live with it.

If Microsoft, Sony, Nintendo all offer a streaming box similar to OnLive, I'm going to laugh my ass off.

I'm stunned.

Completely.

I'm on a single-core computer with less one gig of memory that it shares with the ancient intel integrated graphics card, and it ran Borderlands. Fucking Borderlands!!!

Yes, the graphics were a little fuzzy at times. Yes, it sucks that you don't actually own the games. And yes, they need a bigger library of games. But Jesus Jumped Up Christ, it can run Space Marine on a fucking netbook? What else do you want?

This makes me rethink the entire future of gaming. Not just PC gaming. All video gaming.

The biggest disadvantage that PC gaming has is the inability to rent games. OnLive changes that. The biggest disadvantage that video games have in comparison to other entertainment is how much the games cost. OnLive understands that it's easier to get $6 out of ten people than it is to get $60 out of one person. And for single player games I'd really rather rent them anyway.

With Netflix gearing up to add games, possibly streaming games, and a few other companies lookiing at making similar streaming services; I'd say that things are about to get very interesting.

Edit: Just to clarify, my MSI GX630 bricked on me recently and I haven't gotten around to replacing it yet. The whole experience has kind of put me off of the idea of using laptops as desktop replacements or gaming machines. So Until I get back in the mood to custom build another rig, I'm stuck on this machine.

BTW, I also have an XBox 360, Wii, PSP, DS, Dreamcast, and N64. . . Just not at the location that I'm currently at. . . .

Originally posted by BizkitNL

The exact same thing is happening with MMOs. Tell me, as if you were a game developer, which audience would you rather cater too? 

Sorry to cut it short, but I found this one to be rather.....awesome.

I mean, isn't that exactly the problem we are having? This is exactly why we complain, why we won't stand for mediocracy no more.

Only to hope that more people might open their eyes and realize that these games aren't worth our money. Probably also why F2P is the new trend.

No. It isn't the problem. 

Some customers aren't worth catering to. In the case of grognards, fligh sim pilots, and 'hardcore' MMO players, you're looking at a loud, unpleaseable, shrinking player base. Why would I screw myself by focusing on that market?

Just like with wargames and flight sims, the community is doing way more damage than the designers. 

Originally posted by Sirmaki

Originally posted by Jimmy_Scythe

Exactly what the thread title says.

You know why the original Star War Trilogy was so much better than the prequels? It's because you were 10 years old and everything is fucking awesome when you're 10 years old. 

You've been there. You've done hat. And now you're no longer in the demographic that the game industry caters to. You aren't a surburban white boy between the ages of 14 and 25. It's not the games, it's you.

I've been trying to get this across for years, but it always falls on deaf ears. So here it is one more time. The games are the same brainless fun that they've always been. You've just gotten to old and jaded to participate. 

LOL. Really? So which are you? Too old to play or too young to know what you are talking about? If you didn't play games inthe old days, then you can't compare. If you did, then you are just trying to act cool.

The reason kids don't like the earlier movies is because the "graphics suck" or because they are the type of people who thing Tolkien totally ripped off D&D.

 

I will shut up now since I will be getting a temp ban for saying you are young or some such nonsense so no point in talking until I hurt some mods feelings and get a perma ban. :eyeroll:

I'm 37. I kind of see myself as a retired gamer. I play retro games. I love indie games. And I don't see this "dumbing-down" of gaming that everyone is going on about. In terms of graphics and interface, the majority of games are actually BETTER than the older games. 

And kids generally don't like older movies because those movies don't speak to their experiences or expectations. Take the first Bond movie and compare it to the first Mission Impossible movie. I think that Mission Impossible is vapid, loud, transparently stupid. Most people under 35 will find Dr. NO to be boring as hell and actually be surprised to discover that it was considered an action movie.

The current crop of games don't suck any worse than the games of 1986. It's just that the new games aren't made to appeal to you anymore.

Originally posted by BizkitNL

Originally posted by Jimmy_Scythe

Originally posted by BizkitNL

Originally posted by Jimmy_Scythe

But hey, you had to be there to know that. But it's your lucky day; get a hold of an old NES system with a copy of Ninja Gaiden. Play it, then try to compare it to ANYTHING currently on the market.

THAT is how games used to be (although that example is a harsch one). THAT is what we want. Not the fruitcake games of the present.

The Ninja Gaiden trilogy on the NES are some of the best platformers of all time. To this day, I can't beat them without the use of hacks. I was able to get all the way through the Gamboy version, but never the original NES games.

As far as comparing it to the market today. . . 

Super Meat Boy, Outland, I Wanna Be The Guy, N+, Super Crate Box, VVVVVV . . .

It's actually a pretty good time to be a platform gamer ;-)

Well, I never said I completed it :P. The once that have are as scarce as Jedi.....pun intended.

Anyhoo, I wasn't really trying to compare it to platform games of this time, but I was trying to state that a lot of games back then required more than the skill to find the exclamation marks above NPC heads. Obviously, others were a pile of crap, but that's beside the point.

Games have, over time, become easier. Too easy, in my opinion. And the MMO genre is at the top with this. Catering to the youngest of folk, who are still used to their parents clapping and yelling "Way to go!" whenever they manage to do something trivial.

Me, with my 30 years, am still young (compared to a few in this topic. You know who Im talking to, you old farts!), but I am already on the MMO decline. All I can do (with MMO games that is) is try out the new ones and hope one will finally give me that adventurous feeling, mixed in with a bit of panic here and there.

Therefor, I disagree with the statement. 

But there's the thing. You've been there so you know all of the tricks. People that haven't been doing MMOs for that long don't know the tropes and have that feeling that you're searching for. 

Yes, the games are all reading from the same playbook. That doesn't mean that they suck. They certainly aren't original, but they do what they're supposed to do. Like I said earlier, it's just easier to cater to the lower expectations of newer players than try to exceed the expectations of veterans. It's also a lot less risky.

I remember when The Operational Art of War was released. It was probably the most in depth computer wargame of it's time. And the wargaming community hated it.  They picked at every miniscule inaccuracy and called it mindless eye-candy. BTW, here's what the game looked like:

Did I mention that the game was released in 2006? Mindless eye-candy indeed. . . .

The reason I bring this up is because the people yelling the loudest were the people that had been playing wargames since the early sixties. Yep, they were playing wargames with real maps, cardboard, and dice. And they LIKED IT!!

The exact same thing is happening with MMOs. Tell me, as if you were a game developer, which audience would you rather cater too? 

Originally posted by Marcus-

Originally posted by Jimmy_Scythe

Originally posted by zymurgeist

Jar-Jar didn't suck? Really?

 

Yoda didn't suck? Really?

The ewoks didn't suck? Really? 

They're fucking children's movies!! Get over it!!

 You just lost all credibility

No, no I didn't.

In ESB he was little more than a green muppet. If you look back at contemporary criticisms of the first three films you'll find a Jar-Jar comment in each. The Jar-Jar for the first three movies (in order):

R2-D2

Yoda

The Ewoks

Again. These are children's movies. Period.

Originally posted by BizkitNL

Originally posted by Jimmy_Scythe

But hey, you had to be there to know that. But it's your lucky day; get a hold of an old NES system with a copy of Ninja Gaiden. Play it, then try to compare it to ANYTHING currently on the market.

THAT is how games used to be (although that example is a harsch one). THAT is what we want. Not the fruitcake games of the present.

The Ninja Gaiden trilogy on the NES are some of the best platformers of all time. To this day, I can't beat them without the use of hacks. I was able to get all the way through the Gamboy version, but never the original NES games.

As far as comparing it to the market today. . . 

Super Meat Boy, Outland, I Wanna Be The Guy, N+, Super Crate Box, VVVVVV . . .

It's actually a pretty good time to be a platform gamer ;-)

Originally posted by zymurgeist

Jar-Jar didn't suck? Really?

 

Yoda didn't suck? Really?

The ewoks didn't suck? Really? 

They're fucking children's movies!! Get over it!!

Originally posted by gainesvilleg

Originally posted by Jimmy_Scythe

4)  There have always been game critics.  And genres get stale over time and the critics complain about it.  But then there are sporadic revolutions in gaming that take one genre or another (or hybrids) to new heights.  FPS games for instance (once called Doom clones) had been stale for many years, but had been reinvigorated by Halo 3/Cod4, and probably now reentering a stale phase again.

As an older gamer I was around during the great gaming crash of the late 1980's when people thought gaming had run it's course (many gaming companies went bankrupt including Activision).  Gaming has only gotten bigger and broader demographics.  I am today in my 40's and probably log more hours gaming than I ever have.  Definately more than when I was in my 20's.  Older gamers like myself don't go out partying as much anymore because we have kids in the house.  Instead we settle down for some gaming when the kids go to bed... 

This is pretty much what I'm getting at. 

The majority of games are not bad; just average. But those of us who have been around for awhile see those average games as "brainless," "dumbed down," "eye candy," etc., and so on. We've been here long enough that we're looking for something new and/or exceptional rather than something competently made. And many of us don't bother considering the cycle that you discussed in point four.

As for the demographics widening. . . 

I think that the industry has actually split into catering for two seperate demographics. On the side this forum is on, as well as the bulk of the mainstream gaming market, you have the traditional 14 to 25 white male demographic. On the other side, you have the 40+ cell phone and Facebook market. There's room for both audiences in this hobby. But if you're standing in a teen club, you have no right to complain that there's no beer on tap.

Originally posted by Metentso

Originally posted by Jimmy_Scythe

 

So how i'm having a blast playing Minecraft when i'm 49yo? 

For the same reason I love Monday Night Combat: It's unique. 

There is no other game on the market that you can compare Minecraft to. Going all the way back through my memory, which stretches all the way to the Atari 2600, I can't think of any previous game that is like Minecraft. You like it because it's new and it's good.

But how thrilled are you going to be five years from now with another Minecraft clone? There's already two Minecraft inspired games out there that I'm aware of. It won't be long before the AAA developers get the bug and start working on there own Minecraft cash cow to milk. I wouldn't be surprised if some big publisher like EA was already looking into it. 

The bottom line is that most games that are released are competent representations of their genre. You've just been playing for so long that you want something more than a standard, functional, <insert game type>. In the case of a game that hits all the bullet points for its genre, the problem is less about the game and more about the player's expectations.

Originally posted by Toxia

Originally posted by shinobi234

Originally posted by Jimmy_Scythe

Originally posted by Toxia

Originally posted by Jimmy_Scythe

Originally posted by Toxia

Gunna respond to this as i've said my side of the arguement, and you've said your's, we're not going to agree, so we'll leave it at that hm? :)

I spend about 2-3 hours a night gaming. i have a Full time job, a wife, and a newborn child. I dont hate multiplayer, but its certainly not my bag either. STILL  I would rather have a full fledged 60+ hour game. no question about it. We used to get 60-80+ hour games, now we get 6-8, and pay MORE for them than we did with the 80+ hour ones. add in DLC and all that jazz and its even more. its not OUR fault games suck these days. my two cents :)

Edit: i take abit of that back, it actually is our fault because we keep buying these POS games. so blame is due on us aswell

First, I want to clear up a misunderstanding. I never said that I hated multiplayer. I said that I play games like League of Legends, Team Fortress 2, and Super Street Fighter 4 specifically because I don't have a lot of time to spend gaming.

Next, you must have cut teeth on the PSOne. Back in my day (*cough* NES *cough*) an RPG would last you about twenty hours. On the minicomputers of the day you could get hundreds of hours, but that's only because the last few dungeons were designed to be unreasonably difficult. See also the final dungeon in Bard's Tale (Commodore 64 version) or the last dungeon of Phantasy Star for the Sega Master System. Keep in mind that this was mostly artificial difficulty.

Again. The games weren't any better, in many ways they were actually worse, you were just less savvy about gaming. And now when you look back, you remember those games through the lens of your younger self. At the time, older gamers were calling you an idiot for thinking that FF7 was anything other than a bloated piece of shit. I know. I remember reading forum posts about it back in 1997. 

The games change, but the song stays the same.

Originally posted by Toxia

Originally posted by Jimmy_Scythe

Originally posted by Toxia

Ok, i'll play.

Let's look at Deus ex, as i have actually played and loved this game.

Whats the ESRB rating on it? M. M means Mature= For Adults/Adult Themed.

I'll let it go that the statistics i posted say 41 year olds buy games. You say its for their kids. its an opinion, so i'll have to respect that.

Now just up a number. THE AVERAGE AGE OF A GAMER, not the youngest or oldest, but right in between ((Which is where games would want their target audience to be, yes?) is 37. thats a fact/statistic.

So what put Deus ex at the top of the charts?

It has Depth, it has an engaging Story, makes you WANT to finish it to see what happens next, it has customization through the roof and down the side of it, and it wraps all that in a pretty package. Other games that dont do so well LACK those things, or a combination of them

In my opinion, games suck because there's nothing to them. If i can beat a game in 6-8 hours, on my first playthrough, its a shit game. Even deus ex kinda failed in my eyes on this, even saying i love it, they took what, 60 hours of play outta it to pack it together in the final release? Fuck That, bring back the old days of 3 or 4 disks, and give it all to me.

Finally, if you've been preaching this goodness for years and no one listens, perhaps Everyone isnt wrong. just saying.

my two cents

Short answers:

Rated M holds as much weight as an R rating on a film. There are plenty of cases of "mature" rated movies and music that were audience tested with subjects much lower than the rating would imply. Gaming isn't really any different in this regard. Also note that M is only 17 and up. You must have watched some different trailers because the ones I saw were pushing to the drunken fratboy crowd. Given Deus Ex: HE wasn't as blatantly targeted as Gears of War or any Call of Duty game, but the marketing definitely had the college kid vibe to it. 

How many fucking hours do you spend playing games? I have a wife and a full time job and I'm lucky if I get two hours a night to play. Even on weekends I'll be fortunate to get a four hour block of time to dedicate. . . That's over the entire weekend!  This is the main reason why I stick to multiplayer games since I can do a round or two in twenty minutes. A six to eight hour game is two, three, or more nights of entertainment for me. That's the main reason why I own an XBox 360, so that I can rent shorter games rather than buy them. 

Finally, everyone isn't exactly right either. The internet is a cesspool of negativity and any time you try to suggest that the sky ISN'T falling, you're generally slamming your head against the wall.

Originally posted by MMOtoGO

Originally posted by Jimmy_Scythe

 

You're quoting an absolutely wrong demographic for MMO's.  FPS or Console games, sure 15-25..but MMO's, dead wrong.

The average WoW player is 30.  Yup, 30 years old.  The demographic for any good mmo is aiming much higher than what you're stating.  And, sorry...too many games actually do suck...even my 13 year old son will tell you that.

That picture just made my day. And made me a little bit sad as well.

I'm 37 and I spent my elementary years living in the fallout of the crash of 1983. My first computer was Tandy Color Computer 2 and my first console was an Atari 7800. Up until 1995, most of my gaming was done at the arcade. I bring all of this up because, unlike many of my friends, I never grew out of liking video games. Your picture reminds me that we can carry our hobbies over from childhood in goodness.

By that same token, I'm not a big MMO player. I see tons of potential in the genre, but I just can't get into them. A lot of MMO players came into gaming through UO, EQ, WoW and they don't share the same history or affection for all video games that I have. I'm not going to presume anything about you because I just don't know. But thos people around my age that dig MMOs, generally only play MMOs. This creates a kind of disconnect. Because I don't view modern MMOs as video games so much as fantasy themed slot machines linked to 3D chat rooms. They can be more than that, but most aren't.

Even so...

I think that most MMOs are still caught in the trap of marketing to adolescents boys and awkward nerdy twenty-somethings. Younger people aren't as experienced and that makes it easier to cater to their lower expectations. That isn't to say that there won't be a few diamonds that stand out for those of us who've been around for awhile, but we can't keep complaining that everything is shit and that every mass market product is a sign of the apocolypse.

Originally posted by Toxia

 

1. The average game player is 37 years old and has been playing games for 12 years.
2. The average age of the most frequent game purchaser is 41 years old.

 

 

In my opinion, i disagree with you. I miss the games of yesteryear because they were DEEP, had DEPTH, and a story.

 

Great graphics weren't available then, so gamers had to get sucked into the STORY and GAMEPLAY, not the awesome graphics and OMGSHINY GIMMEGIMMEGIMME's simple gameplay of today.

 

Games then had storyline twists, up's and down's in the emotions of the games, made you WANT to play to see how it all ended, and the fights/puzzles/whatever were the entertainment along the way.

 

My two cents.

Let's play a game.

First, go to Metacritic and look at the top five games across the PC, XBox 360, Playstation 3, and Wii. Or just pick the top one from each platform. Let's break this down with the number one game from each plaform:

Xbox 360 = Deus Ex: Human Revolution

PC = Deus Ex: Human Revolution

Playstation 3 = Limbo

Wii = Bit. Trip Complete

Wow, looks like PS3 and Wii owners are kind of artsy and esoteric....

... But let's continue.

Go check out the Deus Ex: Human Revolution trailer at Gametrailers. Now ask yourself: Who is his trailer made for? Who is the target audience for this ad? Rinse and repeat for any high profile title.

I'm not saying that there are no games made for an older demographic. Or that there are standout games that break with genre conventions. What I'm saying is That, by and large, the game industry is geared toward selling content for boys in thier parent's basement. Sure, we get an occassional Sword of The Stars 2 or E.Y.E. Divine Cybermancy. But those games are NOT the bread and butter of the games industry. 

The complaints about game quality from older gamers has more to do with how genre savvy they are and less to do with the quality of the games in regard to their target audience. You don't like most of the new games out there, because those games were not made for you. 

BTW, the reason why the most frequent purchasers of games are aged 41 and over is because most people in that age group have kids. The kids don't make money, so mom and dad have to buy their games. A vast majority of those forty-somethings that are purchasing games, are either not playing them or so casual that they don't even consider themselves gamers. 

Exactly what the thread title says.

You know why the original Star War Trilogy was so much better than the prequels? It's because you were 10 years old and everything is fucking awesome when you're 10 years old. 

You've been there. You've done hat. And now you're no longer in the demographic that the game industry caters to. You aren't a surburban white boy between the ages of 14 and 25. It's not the games, it's you.

I've been trying to get this across for years, but it always falls on deaf ears. So here it is one more time. The games are the same brainless fun that they've always been. You've just gotten to old and jaded to participate. 

Less like this.

And more like this.

Maybe even like this.

The problem with PC elitists is that they tend to think in only three genres. If it aint MMO, then it must be FPS or RTS. The PC gaming side of things has been locked into those three game types for waaaaayyyyyyy too long.

Basically, we just want to trade tab targeting for lock-on, auto-attack with manual attack, and have the choice to interupt abilities in order to dodge. Those changes would make combat interesting, require you actually be at the keyboard to participate in, and still allow for strategic back-and-forth play. It would be nothing like Halo or Call of Duty.

Games like Vindictus are already doing this.

And FPS combat sucks because....

You have to put a reason up or there's no discussion. I backed my arguement up. You should too.

And I'm not the only person that thinks so.

This kind of combat also has the unfortunate side effect of making MMO players into asshole elitist that think they're smarter than the dirty non-MMO playing peasants. Hate to break it to ya, but being good at remedial math doesn't make you any better than anyone else.

Real strategy and tactics are harder than simply min/maxins some numbers on a spreadsheet.

Originally posted by Dvalon

I hate this article. what it should read is lazy gamers with more money and a job are more inclined to buy. thats not all gamers of an older age.

Um....

If they're so lazy then how come they have a job? . . .

. . . And money?