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I've often pondered a question. I know my personal feelings on that particular question but I'm wondering what other people think.
Is it better to have a game with more interesting/ambitious/cool mechanics that are buggy/unrefined/unfinished or a game with more mundane/boring/generic mechanics that are highly polished?
Obviously, it'd be best to have both, but if one were forced to choose one or the other, which one would people choose?
Now, personally I'd choose the former. I'd take a game that was hacked together in 6 months from a cancelled project that nevertheless had a very intriguing and fun combat system (Singularity) over a highly polished, big budget but ultimately tone deaf and mediocre game (Modern Warfare 2). But I'm wondering what other people think of this.-
@gameragodzilla Can something really be considered all that high quality if it's unfinished and technically deficient? As amusing as flying feral ghouls are, it doesn't really change the fact that Fallout 4 without any of the DLC is a soulless husk.
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@maiyannah I can see that, but whether it was finished or hit its original vision, a version of that interesting idea does exist, and that is still better than that idea just not existing at all IMO. Singularity, as I said, was hacked together in 6 months and it clearly shows. It's a very unrefined game in places, yet I enjoyed the batcave out of it due to its fluid combat mechanics, being able to easily switch between various powers and guns while dealing with a time bending plot about crazy Commies. Meanwhile, Modern Warfare 2 had a huge budget, lots of time for polish, and didn't aspire to be anything other than a brain dead modern military shooter.
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@gameragodzilla I'd rather wait for someone to implement an idea well than have a half-finished game be the reason why big publishers decide that something can't happen or work.
Why do you think mainstream stuff is so safe? Big publishers like EA look at the kickstarter dumpster fires that are these interesting but deeply flawed games and decide it's too "risky"
I'd take one WTNO over 890754390854334 Singularity games.-
@maiyannah Yeah I can see that. Obviously, if a game does come along and implement an idea better/well, it'd render the original game obsolete. But what if said game never arises? I bring up Singularity a lot because there has yet to be a single time travel action game that even got up to Singularity's level. Timeshift was fun, but wasn't as good. Bioshock Infinite was an infinite sack of kiwi. Quantum Break was about as interactive as a David Cage/Hideo Kojima sex orgy. So for a great idea such as combining time travel with FPS gameplay, there's nothing better than it at the moment, and that game, while one that I love, is still heavily flawed.
So if I wanted said experience, should I accept Singularity like I do for being interesting and fun despite its flaws or should I just sit back and hope that some day a developer can attain Singularity's full potential?-
@gameragodzilla There's a reason they don't get made. People look at the failures and every one makes it that much harder to secure funding, get published, and in general just get the cherry done.
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@maiyannah @gameragodzilla Then why is Shaqfu 2 being developed
Sunday, 12-Feb-17 00:07:03 UTC from web-
@nerthos @gameragodzilla Money
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Sunday, 12-Feb-17 00:10:26 UTC from web
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@maiyannah Well not if a game becomes a cult classic. Then it's certainly possible for some developer to come along and at least incorporate its ideas into a game and polish it. Titanfall 2's time travel level was the closest I got to seeing what a fully polished, modernized Singularity would look like, buuuuuuuuut it's only for one level.
I kinda wish they'd do it for an entire game.-
@gameragodzilla There is only one metric of success that matters to publishers about whether a game is "worth it" or not. Did it make a big sack of cash or not.
As an example of this since I consider it such a "cult classic", Bioshock Infinite might have been well-regarded and a critical darling, but commercially it was a failure. It took it a year just to make back it's development budget, even with the rabid hype machine.
This is why there wasn't another Bioshock game and it got relegated to the Burial at Sea DLC.-
@maiyannah True, but that's merely because of its obese budget than lack of sales. Everyone knew and was talking about it.
But yeah I see your point. I just wish some developers would look at the cult classics and see the potential the fanbase saw in the property. After all, to use your Wolfenstein The New Order example, Wolfenstein 2009, while I also enjoyed heavily, didn't sell very well. It was one of the two games that killed Raven Software, or at least one of the two games Activision screwed Raven Software with. But nevertheless, the Wolfenstein series didn't die. Instead, Machinegames came along, looked at the franchise and its strengths, and evolved it to the logical conclusion. Hey, the Nazis have all this super tech they developed in the previous games. What if they used that tech to win the war? Boom, fantastic game there.-
@gameragodzilla This represents the positive of Kickstarter. We, the gamers, can fund directly the games we would like to see based upon the promising concepts we like.
That's the ideal right there.
But as we both know, the reality is ... less as great.-
@maiyannah Yeah true, because Kickstarter backers ultimately don't have any real control over the creative process. The creators can take their feedback, and it's certainly in good practice to be transparent, but if the creators wipe their asses with the feedback, that'll have far less immediate repercussions than if they did it with a profit oriented publisher. We need a developer who wants to create something great with a publisher who's willing to rein in some of the crazier or less realistic ideas and create a game that fulfills its potential. When that happens, we get Wolfenstein The New Order and Doom.
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@gameragodzilla Ultimately the ideal Kickstarter competitor would be one that gives the users some sort of control or security on their investment.
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@maiyannah Yeah, but no creator would actually go there. People go to Kickstarter in the first place to have complete and total freedom to do whatever they want, including Potato Knishes away the backer money on cocaine and hookers.
Shame too as if Kickstarter actually worked as intended, I'd love to fund, say, a sequel to Singularity. Let Raven Software off the leash, create the game they wanted to initially, and I'd be a happy camper. But as is, I'll still enjoy Singularity by itself as despite its flaws, there's really not much quite like it, and the stuff that does compare are all even worse, despite higher budgets like for Bioshock Infinite Suckage or Quantum TV Break-
@gameragodzilla No creator that's trying to rip people off, but I think if you establish a niche for it as the better and safer alternative you can get there. People forget this, but this is how Paypal originally established itself - it was safer than giving some unknown person your credit card details. Or that was the sell anyways.
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@maiyannah I guess after seeing Kickstarter, Indiegogo and various other crowdfunding platforms show me flop after flop, I pretty much lost all trust that anyone would actually be completely honest.
Admittedly, there are a few people who have delivered complete and competent games, with proper transparency with their backers, but I don't even know if they would be willing to give their backers power to actually hold them completely accountable like that.
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@gameragodzilla I'd go for the former. Generally the game breaking stuff will be able to be jury rigged, or at most take some reloads when something breaks, but can be fun. Sometimes it's even fun to mess with the bugs.
Saturday, 11-Feb-17 23:56:31 UTC from web
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