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The camper isn't the unskilled player - the player who get's killed by the camper is the one that's unskilled."
Nobody really buys any FPSes unless they're called Call Of Duty," he continues. "I guess Battlefield did okay, but aside from that pretty much every FPS loses money. I mean, [look at] Crysis 2: great game, but there's no way it came anywhere close to recouping its dev costs.""
Also, overall, I prefer local multiplayer when playing console games. I just think it's a better fit for console gaming. If I'm going to play games online, more often than not I'm going to play them on PC where the environment and infrastructure are better. A big part of why I don't like console online is because I don't like matchmaking. If dedicated servers were more common on consoles I might feel different."
Also, I really hate games where certain actions you do cause the camera to cut away to show your character doing a little animation. Things like opening doors, executing enemies, etc. Whenever the camera cuts away or your character animates independently for more than a few freames, I start to feel less responsible for my character's actions."
I'm surrprised no one here mentioned horror games. To me those were some of the only big console games in the past to try to illicit any negative emotion in the player, whether that be panic or depression. The Silent Hill games in particular were sort of a breakthrough for what a game could make the player feel through the use of atmosphere.
The problem with gaming as a medium right now is that it's mostly escapism. Escapism has its place, but the industry needs to diversify out from that."
I think this is strange because Japan is almost the only country whose games are being treated this way. Just about every other culture that makes video games is making games that, generally, have appeal to world audiences. Even games from Eastern Europe and other Asian countries resemble American and Western European games than Japanese games. Japan seems to be the one country that makes games just for its own people. That may be keeping them unique, but it's kind of isolating them from the rest of the world."
The problem is that home versions of DDR still suck with their light track lists. I still have to use stepmania most of the time, but I still haven't been able to try out the recent one that came out on PS3."
Ask anyone who plays Call of Duty or other shooters purely for the multiplayer, or anyone who's been playing any recent Bethesda game. The same goes for Sim City or any other simulation game."
I think that role-playing aspect of Mass Effect and Dragon Age are actually the best parts of those games. Sure the freedom isn't total, but it's enough to make players feel immersed and involved in what's going on in the narrative. Better yet, because those decisions have some impact on what you're doing when you control your character, the story begins to actually matter in context of the game. A lot of RPGs like BioWare's games would be much poorer without their writing.
Examples you made like Portal and Valve's other games are in fact more interactive with their narrative, but they are also limited on the scope of what they can do because we haven't figured out how to make carrying a conversation totally interactive and dynamic. The solutions we see in RPGs and adventure games are the best tools we have now and I think the system is perfectly fine for the time being.
More straight, linear action games like Uncharted or Gears filled with cut scenes have another problem. Yes they have good writers doing the dialogue and the cut scenes, but those writers have to work around the game that the designers have already made, which probably isn't meant to tell a story. Naughty Dog straight-up admitted they wrote Uncharted 3 around the set pieces. The problem isn't not having good writers, the problem is that those writers don't have very much control over the game itself. I think getting writers involved earlier on and more deeply in the process might change some things.
Some of the best games in terms of narrative came from people who were simultaneously well-versed in game design and writing. The best example I can think of is Prince of Persia creator Jordan Mechner who is also a screenwriter, and I think the results show in how Sands of Time played out. Fumito Ueda is a similar example. Sadly, game design remains almost completely divorced from writing and storytelling, and I'm not sure when that's going to begin to change on the whole.
Adventure games and RPGs are probably where that kind of interaction is most apparent, even if you do end up having to pick a bunch of text on a screen."
All of our expectations for the service end of console gaming right now are based on what Microsoft offers with LIVE. This is because they were the first to get out there and innovate with their form of online console gaming, social networking, and software updates. Sony had to follow suit and they just weren't ready.
For one thing, Microsoft is a software company, Sony isn't. Microsoft's experience building Windows undoubtedly gave them the upper hand when building a console's OS and backend. I think this includes aspects of the Xbox 360 itself that give its OS and service an inherent leg up over that of the PS3. I think the reason the PS3 can't have cross-game chat is because Microsoft purposefully set aside resources in the 360 hardware for cross-game chat, and Sony did not. They couldn't because they couldn't predict the need for cross-game chat before Microsoft brought on that innovation. There's probably a similar reason why software updates and such are slower on the PS3. This was all a case of victory of the first mover.
I don't think Sony can get their service up to the same level as Live on their current hardware. The thing is, even if the PS4's version of PSN is up to the same standard as Live, by then Microsoft will have a new console with more innovations built into it that will introduce more advantges that Sony won't be able to catch up to on static hardware. It's a moving taret. The only service that has been able to beat Live in terms of usability is Steam, which is working on an open platform.
You can see the qualities of each company in its products. Microsoft - the software company, has the superior console OS but has had problems with their hardware (red rings and such). Sony is an appliance company, and this generation they decided to make the PS3's advantage its capability as a general home entertainment device. The PS3 is a more reliable machine (especially the slim), and really an excellent video player.
Lemme put it like this: When I play my Xbox 360, I feel like I'm playing a game console. When I play my PS3, I feel like I'm playing games on a home entertainment box."