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Plus, that doesn't change the fact that she's too stupid to actually insert them properly. It's a lazy piece of narrative crafting. "
Of course, I kinda reconsidered later for the same points you mention. It's probably easy to find someone who can use a gun, but I also thought that since Carley's a reporter that means we could eventually end up at the station -- where there's a news helicopter. That's pretty useful. I'm probably totally wrong, but you never know. Plus no one might be capable of actually flying it...but yeah.
That's probably the coolest thing about the game to me -- I really put a ton of silly extraneous thought into the choices, in much the same way I did in Witcher 2. I like that games are making me weigh the options of my choices instead of just selecting obvious answers to move a morality bar. It's certainly a step in the right direction. You can make a case for saving either Doug or Carley -- and I'm sure both will be useful moving forward, as long as there are no more radios that need batteries."
I dunno -- maybe I'd play a high fantasy massively multiplayer online version of Planet of the Apes. :p"
If you get around to playing it, hope you enjoy it -- and would love to hear what you think about it."
I'd be interested in hearing what you thought of that game and how it handled choice if you played it. "
You're spot on -- this isn't for gamers and gamers aren't the target audience. This is about getting MS machines into every living room they can and displacing Rokus and Apple TVs and all these other gadgets as the one stop shop for all of these non-gamers' non-gaming entertainment needs. All they're missing now is a 360 with a DVR. "
You still need PR/Marketing etc. because every developer is looking to grow. Making games solely for the people who contribute is great, but that's preaching to the choir. Anyone who makes games wants the games to reach the widest audience possible so they can do bigger things, right? Word of mouth is nice, but an ad on TV reaches far more eyeballs than a series of message board posts -- and let's remember, not all gamers are like us -- many don't spend their days on game news sites or message boards or any of that. They see an ad on TV or a print spot somewhere, and that puts a title on their radar. You'd lose out on that huge potential market share with just word of mouth advertising.
You need PR to coordinate with the gaming press for reviews/previews etc. These are all services developers still need on some level.
Interesting points, though -- I don't disagree with what you're saying. "
I've been told I'm a pessimist a time or two in the past. :p
In regards to your first point, there are tons of cult games -- but the fact that they're cult means they don't have a wide mainstream audience, which is sort of necessary to raise tens of millions of dollars in my estimation. I mean, there are some fans of cult games who'd pony up a grand or more for a new title, but I don't think most people can afford that. With a smaller devoted pool of people to donate, can a cult title generate the amount of funds a mainstream game would cost in today's market? I'm not sure. Not saying it can't happen -- I just have my doubts.
Kojima and Nomura are like Schafer -- they're the few guys who probably could raise that kind of money. Top tier guys like that -- auteurs, if you will -- could conceivably pull in that kind of cash. They're sort of the exception, though.
Today's Ars Technica piece on this topic mentions that some of these budgets approach $100 million now. Keep in mind -- that's not the cost of developing the game. If you eliminate the publisher, you have to pick up the tab for marketing, PR, production, distribution, advertising, and all those other "business" things that a publisher handles so you can be a creative type making videogames. I'm not sure most developers will even want to deal with that stuff in the first place. It's the business of art, really.
Ultimately, I think it's too soon to tell where all of this is going to wind up. Right now, it's a bit of a novelty for most people. I think we'll see more developers test the waters with it -- and I think that's actually a good thing. That being said, I don't really see it becoming the new standard of game funding and there are a lot of potential pitfalls with the system.
Thanks for the comment -- you all have certainly raised some interesting points. "
