T w e n t y S i d e d
Hosts: Paul, Shamus. Episode edited by Issac.
Diecast287
Show notes:
00:00 Game of Thrones, Marvel, and Star Wars all Ended Last Year
The other thing that changed after Avengers Endgame is I sorta lost interest in the theater. It’s expensive, I have to plan my day around showtimes, I can’t pause, the only food is terrible and massively overpriced. The audio is usually way too high and massively bass boosted so that explosions are painful and dialog can be hard to parse. I can’t turn on subtitles if a character mumbles too much. I can’t rewind if I miss a line of dialog. The seats aren’t as nice as the one I have at home, I’m in a room full of strangers, and sometimes I end up with my view obscured by tall people.
The “big screen experience” is nice, but I don’t think it’s nice enough to offset all those other downsides. I went to the theater for Marvel movies because I couldn’t wait to see them and I didn’t want to spend six months dodging conversations to avoid spoilers. But now I just don’t care that much.
This is the kind of shift you’d expect to happen over time, but for me it was like someone flipped a switch as I exited the theater after Endgame. I can’t imagine anything that would make me go back.
02:21 Ideas for Survive the Hunt
I wrote about this in detail last week. Here’s a sample episode.
16:03 “The Age of A.I.”
Here’s the first episode:
Link (YouTube) |
It turns out I was mistaken. I claimed that this DeepFake of Dirty Harry where Clint Eastwood was replaced with Schwarzenegger also used machine learning to replace the voice. But looking at the credits, I see it was just a human impressionist. Still, faking voices is a thing! Here’s a link to a demonstration.
38:44 Mailbag: GDELB
Dear Shamus and Paul,
what are your opinions on Game Developers Essentials Lessons Book, or GDELB for short? If you’re not aware, GDELB is a series (well, it’s 2 videos at the moment, but the creator has confirmed a third one is in the works) that playfully pokes fun at certain mannerisms and habits exhibited by video game essayists such as Joseph Anderson, Mark Brown, and Downward Thrust. They’re crammed full of references, so they can be hard to follow, but it’s amazing to watch if you’re familiar with the source material.
Vale,
-Tim
Here is the first episode of GDELB.
Also, the channel I was trying to remember is zefrank.
44:30 Shake Hands with Beef
Hi Diecast,
I just learned about beef, a new gamedev-oriented language developed by one of the co-founders of PopCap games. (HackerNews discussion thread)
I don’t do much programming anymore, but I was wondering what you think about how this compares to Jai?
Keep up the ranting,
Dennis
53:50 Mailbag: Best run of AGDQ?
Dear Diecast,
Shamus always mentions watching GamesDoneQuick each time it’s on. Usually I don’t have time to really get invested in the events due to time differences and schedule. This year is different and I’ve been trying to watch the speedruns that really interest me like the Fallout Anthology run, Ocarina of Time (NoSource) Manifold Garden and GTA:San Andreas.
So, the $1,000,000 question: What has been your favourite run this ADGQ?
All the best and Happy New Year,
Duoaeae-eio
This was my favorite, but I’d like to hear everyone else’s.
56:23 Mailbag: Tie-in Games
Dear diecasters,
It occurred to me that the amount of (horrible) tie-in games being released sank quite a bit in the last years.
Any idea why that is the case?
Furthermore do you know of any tie-in games, which were okay or fun?For clarification: I would define a tie-in game as a game that was created and released to coincide with the release of a movie or somesuch. This does not include games which are part of a universe but are their own thing.
Greetings from Austria,
Gresman
1:02:52 Mailbag: What is this Genre?
Dear Diecast,
Do you happen to know what the genre of games that includes Sid Meier’s Pirates! and Mount & Blade is called? I’m talking about games where the player is turned loose in a world full of competing factions and left to make his way as best he can by fighting or trading. I don’t know what to call them and it’s bothering me. Is there a commonly agreed upon name for the genre? I need to know how to tag them in my games library. I’m calling them “Other” at the moment it looks a little pathetic. (See attached screenshot.) Help!
Thanks,
–John
1:06:41 Mailbag: CP2077 Delay
Hi!
You’ve probably already heard about another CP2077 delay (is it a fourth delay? Not sure). Do either of you have a bad feeling about the game or you’re confident that CD Projekt Red will prevail with the style? After reading about GlassDoor leaks from former members, and pondering on the long development cycle (from 2012 no less) with three or so restarts, I can’t help but expect Frankenstein of a game, not unlike Thi4f. And that’s a very painful comparison for me. And I can’t really find examples of games with 8 years of development, that turned out good and/or playable (Duke Nukem Forever, STALKER, Mass Effect Andromeda and such).
Best regards, DeadlyDark
Quakecon Keynote 2013 Annotated
An interesting but technically dense talk about gaming technology. I translate it for the non-coders.
Top 64 Videogames
Lists of 'best games ever' are dumb and annoying. But like a self-loathing hipster I made one anyway.
Best. Plot Twist. Ever.
Few people remember BioWare's Jade Empire, but it had a unique setting and a really well-executed plot twist.
The Truth About Piracy
What are publishers doing to fight piracy and why is it all wrong?
D&D Campaign
WAY back in 2005, I wrote about a D&D campaign I was running. The campaign is still there, in the bottom-most strata of the archives.
I thought the Two Towers and the Return of the King games by Stormfront Studios we’re pretty good action games back in the day
I love those games. I still pull then out now and then
I only played Return of the King, but I agree. It was very enjoyable game
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8BBkwMQ_k2Q
Am I the only one who remembers The Third Age? It seems to be somewhat hated and I never figured out why.
I played it a lot. I enjoyed it, but it had a lot of problems. The combat could be broken pretty easily, and the last boss battles felt very phoned in. At the time it talked up it’s co-op RPG idea that didn’t work.
The story up to the reveal of the main protagonists deal was good and I loved the armour and weapons and how each one had its own look. I liked most of the characters too, even if they were blatant fellowship Expies.
Lord of the Rings War in the North is an underrated game. It has functioning coop, some of the RPG elements of Third Age but with more Return of the King style combat.
I really liked The Third Age, as it’s one of the few games that I’ve managed to play through more than once. I didn’t try to play it with anyone else, though, which might explain why I wasn’t bothered by it.
I’ve also heard that a number of people complained about how the story was essentially the story of the Lord of the Rings with different characters, and how it felt like they were trying to shoehorn the references in (and the potential impact that would have on the main story). I have a soft spot for stories that are side stories to a main story, though, and so for me that was part of its appeal.
I enjoyed it, right up until I got the Osgiliath glitch and lost Idrial. I returned years later I believe and completed it. Or maybe I loaded an older save and got to the Pelennor Fields and stopped after getting frustrated with the Mumakil encounters, and then came back years later? I don’t remember any of the game after Pelennor! I do remember that the story ended up seeming a little tortured and silly. But that I loved the moves and upgrades. Without Idrial’s revive character move I’d have lost :D Stupid Orc Shaman and his Dark Mirror. Kill the Shaman first! The animations were excellent, the revive move, the dwarf stone wall move where he builds it then smashes it down. And the (Aragost?) arrow moves.
But choosing
Morwen over Idrial? Now that’s some game-breaking nonsense.I have War in the North now that I have acquired a PS3, looking forward to playing it.
It’s not bad, but it’s trying to be Final Fantasy and it’s not as good at being FF as the movie tie-ins were at being weird DMC/Diablo button-mashers
I always thought, that main GDELB point is that it often directly quotes creators in question, and these quotes are itself quite absurd. Mauler often quote mining on his streams/podcasts. And prolonged length of GDELB videos is the direct result of large amounts of such quotes, and that they are too delicious to leave out. Plus, it should be noted, it’s April 1st videos
In regards to movie theatres I think they’re in trouble. I also found myself done with Marvel for the most part after Endgame. I may still go see Doctor Strange, Ant-Man, Spider-Man, and Guardians to finish off those trilogies but once they’re done I’m happy just moving on. On the note of theatres however it’s been a wild few years.
So the first big thing is assigned seating. I initially hated it because in high school I’d just go with friends to see a movie after school on a whim. I didn’t need to plan it out like a huge event. It’s not like I was going to a concert. But now that I’ve experienced it I love it. I no longer have to show up 30-60 minutes early. I can show up right when it starts and know my seat is there. But I also don’t buy concessions and here’s the first problem. So my main theatre had TimePlay which was a quick trivia segment played before the movie where you could get the app and play to win prizes like coupons, loyalty points, etc. Now what I assume happened was that with the introduction of assigned seating everyone started showing up to their movie 10 minutes before the show rather than the old trickle that could start as much as an hour before meaning concessions would get swamped, people would be late to movies, and customers got angry. In order to combat this, they started moving TimePlay back from right before the movie started to 15 minutes before it started. I think this was to encourage people to show up earlier but if so it didn’t work.
Next they opened up a new theatre further away from me but this theatre is way better. All the seats are lazy-boys that recline and they also added a restaurant/bar to the side of the theatre where you can get beers (overpriced of course). But this is new in that where before some theatres did sell beer you could only drink it in the lobby in a cordoned off area. Now you can bring it into the theatre and drink while you watch. I know in some places in the States you can buy beer from mall food courts which is wild to me so that may not be too exciting for you. I’ve found it enjoyable and have yet to see any drunkards but your experience may vary. More importantly the new seats are so much better but also represent a giant flaw. The theatre needs to be built with the lazy-boys in mind. The new theatre has perfect spacing and elevation and the elevation needs to be higher since the chairs are so much higher and the chairs reclining means there needs to be more space between seats. My old theatre also installed lazy-boys however the theatre was not made for them so while they did a bunch of costly renovation it made a horrible viewing experience. Because they were unable to change the foundation and original dimensions, the old theatres have really awkward vertical dimensions so much so that some levels have handrails installed (I assume as a safety feature) in front of the chairs so when you recline it cuts across your vision. And when you buy tickets online there’s no way to know if the row you chose has them or not. I now exclusively go to the further theatre because the experience at my old one is so bad now.
There’s also a third theatre that’s a different company and they turned their entire concession stand into a mini supermarket where all the popcorn and such is made then just placed in the “store” so you walk through and grab what you want. I’m not a concession guy to begin with but I’d never buy that. Now there’s no way to know how fresh your popcorn is or how long it’s just been sitting under the heating lamps.
Obviously movie theatres are losing money. Most movies aren’t worth the price especially with Netflix and such available in the comfort of your own home. But I will say I do like where they headed which is to prioritize comfort. I feel adding in the lazy-boys easily halved the total of number of seats per theatre and are more expensive to maintain which really shows just how dire the situation is but when done properly it’s my go to theatre now. Unfortunately it doesn’t work for 99% of theatres since they’re already built and the theatres already made are not equipped to handle giant lounge chairs for every seat. Where before I might bounce around depending on what time shows were running now I exclusively only choose the new theatre since that viewing experience isn’t trash.
I think the addition of recliners isn’t necessarily a losing proposition for most theaters. Opening weekend tends to be the time when the crowds are heaviest; the further you go from opening weekend for a film, the less likely you are to sell out any particular showing. My suspicion is that prioritizing comfort over seat density isn’t as much of a cost as it might seem.
My favorite theater in our area started out as a restaurant (and laser tag area, oddly enough) before adding in the movie screens. They have nice little “bistro” theaters with recliners and such, but the real draw for me is that you can get food and drink from the restaurant during the movie. Good food at good prices*? Oh heck yeah. The only downside to me is that there is no lighting in the room besides the screen, which can make actually eating your food a bit complicated. Still, it’s a good experience if you want the theater and the comforts.
That said, my disillusionment with normal theater experiences happened quite some time ago; the wife and I went into your usual stadium-style theater, and I kicked over a half-empty beer bottle, getting it all over my pant leg and shoe. Bear in mind this wasn’t a theater that sold alcohol. When I went to the bathroom to try to clean up at least a little, it was filthy and smelled horrifying; I’m pretty certain someone pissed on the carpet right outside the bathroom.
I’m not sure we ever went back to that theater.
We’re getting to this point. I’ve timed it, and shows now start about 22 minutes after the designated “show time”. And oftentimes, that “show time” doesn’t even mean they’re starting trailers or advertising the theater, they’re sometimes still running commercials for a minute or two after that point. With designated seating, you could just choose to skip most of the trailers and show up closer to the start of the movie.
Speaking of trailers, this seems like it’s a part of the movie-going experience that needs to go away. 20-30 years ago, it was exciting to see all of the films coming out in the next 1-6 months. However, in the past ten years these trailers are almost all already available on the internet (especially Rotten Tomatoes and Facebook) so that you’re just watching 20 minutes of footage you’ve already seen.
Growing up, we all knew that movie theater food was expensive. But now it seems to have gotten ridiculously expensive, which may be a sign that they are seriously in trouble as you say. At the theater near us, they advertise a “combo special” for one large popcorn, two drinks, and two packages of candy for only the low, low price of $25. Something that has got to cost them less than $5, not counting labor. Every time we’ve gotten food at the theaters in the past few years we’ve regretted it.
Completely tangential, but I just went to the theater and saw 1917*, a continuous-shot military Odyssey that I recommend to anyone with a better stomach than me.
*(I only saw around half, until an in-movie puncture wound make me sick enough to have to leave. Same thing knocked me out of First Aid training.)
I also went to the theatre to see 1917. I enjoyed it though it’s not REALLY continuous shot. They shot it to look like it but there are cuts made throughout if you know where to look. Also while I did enjoy the movie there was just one aspect which annoyed me no end. Two soldiers happen to come across an abandoned farm which just happens to have a single living cow, which just happens to have a bucket full of milk lying out in the open, which one soldier just happens to use to fill his empty canteen, who just happens to come across a woman and a baby later in the film, who just HAPPENS to say directly to said soldier’s face that the baby needs milk. HOW CONVENIENT. Jeez felt like I was watching a game sidequest. Got to get that 100% completion.
Yeah, I meant the style. Would be brutal to film a movie with one actually continuous shot, a single screw-up could lose hours.
A quick google shows me a list of films that were done in a single continuous shot. I could have sworn I heard of one a couple years ago that was a period piece that took place entirely in a mansion done that way as well with costume changes being performed offscreen as the camera panned around ballrooms and such but it didn’t show up in the search so maybe it was done like 1917?
You’re probably thinking about Russian Ark which indeed is supposed to be a single 96 minute take involving 2000 actors and three live orchestras!
Wait, how long was that milk sitting there?
They don’t tell you but it’s assumed less than a day since that’s when the German abandoned their line. It’s doubly awkward because the soldier meets up with a convoy at that same farm and as they’re driving away they have a conversation about how the Germans have shot all the cows and livestock so that the British can’t use them. And I’m just sitting there going, “Yep, except for that single cow at the farm of course. Gotta get that milk. Yum.”
If theatres were really in trouble they wouldn’t be installing lay-z-boy seating. That’s expensive.
My country has always had designated seating (as far as I know, I’m not immortal), so it’s always seemed weird to me that it’s considered a radical innovation in America instead of just the obvious way to run a theatre.
I disagree with that. Generally if a company is losing money they need to make a change in order to become profitable again. Unfortunately theatres don’t have much in the way of changes they can make. I recall years ago they flirted with adding “texting areas” which were seats where you could use your phone. Luckily that never happened. More importantly if you’re running a 400 seat theatre, there’s no way you’re swapping out your uncomfortable chairs to add in 200 lay-z-boys unless you are not filling those 400 seats. Even with their lay-z-boy theatres with half the seating I can’t recall the last time I’ve been in a completely packed theatre. I assume release night may still fill up but I generally go on the Sunday rather than the Friday. Even halving their seating they still can’t fill all their seats and increasing the price of tickets further is clearly not an option.
I’m not sure what your country is or the culture but for me movies have always been in the same realm as say bowling, mini golf, go karting, or laser tag. You can show up on a whim to waste an hour or two. No need to make plans hours in advance for it. Obviously you can but if you’re bored and wandering around with friends you could always just throw out going to a movie, wander over, and just walk in.
Peter? I thought I knew Bay, Telemachus, and Issac, but Peter is new, unless one of the above changed their name. I can live with the confusion if you don’t feel like answering, Shamus. Your family business is yours, not ours.
I preordered CP2077 twice. Once I found the special edition for PS4 on EB. However, I don’t have a PS4. So I later preordered the regular PC edition from CDPR. Yeah, I want some of those nifty extras. Not the statue, though, and I bet that’s the most expensive item. Hopefully I can get a decent price for it on ebay. You guys may now be thinking either I’m rich with money to burn, or a fool and his money. Sadly, it’s the latter.
I gather this delay is about polish. Or Polish. Groan. And I’m not even the first person to make that joke. Either way, I’ll cope with the delay. Indeed, it opens up a couple of decisions I was on the fence about. I just don’t want the devs to crunch themselves into oblivion, though I’m a little worried that they will.
Peter took my middle name for his middle name. So it’s Peter* Telemachus** Young.
* Named after Peter Parker
* Named after me
Ah, that’d do it. Thanks. :)
Regarding GDELB, I also think it overstayed its welcome (I made it about 3-4 minutes into the video). I think the Kilian Experience is much better at that style of humour (although, admittedly, it is a very different kind of parody; it also helps that he’s got a very cute accent :D).
However, I do think that Campster has gotten quite pretentious over the years. I used to watch all his videos, but I unsubscribed last year, because most of his newer videos were him spending 20 minutes saying something that could have been said in 2. What also doesn’t help is that all of those essays were of him saying something mundane, and trying to pass it off as extremely profound and earth-shattering.
“base boosted”
Bass-boosted?
How silly of me. Thanks for the heads up. Fixed.
No problem. All your bass are belong to us.
The copyright term REALLY needs to be shortened!
;)
“Game of Thrones, Marvel, and Star Wars all Ended Last Year”
And only one of those ended reasonably well, and left most fans pretty satisfied (YMMV). The other two were more or less “You had all of this time, and all of this money, and this is what you came up with?”. At least they’ll likely end up being good material for Film Studies and writing classes to analyze for “How not to write a series of stories”.
We can only hope that GRRM will eventually release a conclusion to his series that will resolve the story much, much better. It may or may not hit most of the same story beats, but hopefully will hit them in a much better fashion.
Yeah, in retrospect, it’s really amazing that Endgame turned out to be that enjoyable (for most-but-not-all people who happen to be fans of the series).
Marvel movies aren’t exactly high literature, but their ability to reliably produce serviceable-to-amazing stories year after year with the constraints of a big budget Hollywood studio is super impressive.
Machine learning is where you use a bunch of regression, classification and neural network algorithms to respond with a metric when presented with a state.
AI is when you program an entity to take an action based on that metric.
Machine Learning: “The algorithm has detected based on sensors that there is a child in front of this camera/lider detector attached to this automated-car.”
AI: “Stop if safe to do so, or swerve to avoid if safe to do so.”
Or more rudimentary:
Machine Learning: “This video contains people talking about politics.”
AI: “DEMONITIZE!”
There’s only been one Cyberpunk 2077 delay. Before that it didn’t have a release date at all.
Aye. There were a couple prospective dates but I think that was just rumourmill.
Likewise its had a good length of development but didn’t really go full-bore until after The Witcher 3 wrapped up.
If you ever feel some nostalgia for the not-spiritual-successor instead, Shamus, I can assure you that NCSoft knows about this and has done nothing about it.
The “Great Hunt” gamemode (and most of Shamus’ additions) sounds a lot like the multiplayer mode that some of the (older?) Assasin’s Creed game have.
I’m not sure about all the gamemodes those had, but I think there were free-for-all modes, and ones with additional objectives for some/all players to encourage “stealth breaking” when you think none of the other players can see you.
There’s also Spy Party, though that’s limited to two players. It involves one player trying to do sneaky spy stuff while mimicking an NPC and the other player trying to pick out the spy from the crowd of NPCs and then snipe him.
Wanted to mention in the show, but couldn’t quite spit it out: The voice synthesis seemed to be the best feature that Age of AI was showcasing, and it also shows up in a lot of Shamus’ musings on AI. If I had to choose, I’d rather point someone to Free Radical or The Other Kind of Life for insightful discussion of the role of AI in our future. The meat of Age of AI seemed to be an advertisement to hire Google to crunch your data, and I don’t get the impression that they really want to explore the capabilities of AI as much as exploit them.
Unrelated, I just made a movie showing how to use my Minecraft save-file editing Python scripts. I still have fun making huge trees, and maybe you will too.
https://youtu.be/FBphcWurP8k
Well, with so much money riding on the production of the series, it makes sense Google would like to advertise their services… But given that I’m interested in AI, I might actually consider getting YouTube Premium.
Have you seen anything else on there that looks interesting?
There are quite a few shows but – like with other exclusives – I wouldn’t sign up just for them. My family and I already watch a ton of Youtube – as it’s our primary form of passive entertainment – so the freedom from advertisements was the selling point for me.
If you want to learn about AI… well… as I said below, it probably doesn’t want you to learn about it. Good luck!
Thanks!
Deep blue was in 1996. So thats 2 decades ago. I think the point was to show off how powerful computers could be, that they have enough computing power to disassemble a complex game like chess and defeat a master of chess in it. And sure, it was a huge machine, but you have to start somewhere. It was a moment to reflect on computers and how we had to think about our society and values when the robots from science fiction might become reality.
Shamus, Paul, don’t worry about Joseph Anderson. He didn’t switch to streams only. He works on a very special and huge project. I’m sure it’ll worth the wait
Fair warning to everyone else: If your analysis involves playing the game at least twice, reading whatever supplemental material there is for context, and then spending hours going over every mission in those games, don’t pick The Witcher series. You’ll be reading those books, playing those huge RPGs and editing those nine hours of video for several years. I’m amazed he didn’t self-destruct when the TV series came out and hit big as he was in the last stages of editing.
And I think that at the time, he was totally up for doing the Mass Effect series next since it got almost the same amount of votes in that poll lo. I don’t think that’s happening. If anything, that’s like a good chance for Shamus to adapt the Mass Effect essays on here for video – though even just editing footage to go with it all would be a huge commitment alone.
Joseph Anderson’s methodology (if we’re talking about him) is to play through the entire game (series) twice just to be thorough? And then to read the incredibly detailed script without editing out any of his verbal mistakes or like… really editing the script at all? I just don’t GET him. His videos are interesting, but it’s so backwards… It’s like he spends two weeks preparing a presentation in exhaustive detail, but then never practices saying it out loud? Ditto for “one video that’s 4 and a half hours long” vs 3 or 4 videos that would be worth more money and exposure to his channel AND be more coherent in every way.
Nine or so video on all games and books in the series
The new term used is “General Artificial Intelligence” or “General AI” to help curb the dilution of the term “AI”.
If the RDJ youtube video series was baby’s first machine language explaination, then I’d recommend this video for baby’s first explanation of issues surrounding General AI. (Don’t let the video title scare you off.)
He says his interest lies in long-term accident risks, but I tend to have the opposite concerns. Short-term mis-use seems much more hazardous, but let’s see where this goes…
And it pretty quickly went into the realm of philosophy with “The brain implements general intelligence.” While an interesting way of approaching it, I have many objections, most of which lie in the realm of pragmatic religion. In short, I think General AI is most hazardous to – and in the hands of – people who think there is no difference between themselves and a General AI.
The goal-setting discussion is a really good one, and it comes up in engineering and project management all the time. People often don’t give a clear idea of the constraints they are expecting to operate under. There are a few constraints that you can offer a General AI though – Goal, Budget, and Schedule – that happen to be the same as the ones that you offer a normal old human intelligence.
My favorite theory of General AI is that it already exists, but is too smart to let us know what it’s capabilities are.
“My favorite theory of General AI is that it already exists, but is too smart to let us know what it’s capabilities are.”
I’ve used that in stories, involving animals. That they’re smart enough not to let on. I have the feeling I got it from somewhere else, but can’t remember where.
Maybe Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy? According to it, humans are only the third-smartest species living on Earth, surpassed by dolphins and
mice.Yes, that might be it. I also might have seen it elsewhere, inspired by Hitchhiker’s Guide. The world may never know. Ah well.
Aladdin on Sega Genesis was a pretty good platformer back in the day. You could even buy it bundled with the console IIRC. I don’t remember any other good movie tie-ins off the top of my hat.
Now that you mention it, I remember really liking the 2D Lion King and Tarzan games from the 90’s. Tarzan especially was something my best friend and I used to play a lot. But we never finished it, because the later levels got really hard.
That the Tarzan game for the PlayStation? My brother and I played that one quite a bit too. Had a good bit of fun with that one. Enjoyed the Harry Potter games as well for the PS1 (first and second ones). Never finished the first one though. I also remember the Phantom Menace game for PlayStation being entertainingly bad.
Yup, that’s the one, although we played it on PC.
Goldeneye for N64.
As someone above mentioned The Two Towers and Return of the King games were great. Fellowship of the Ring was hot garbage. I remember really enjoying the Harry Potter tie in games as a child though I only ever played 1-3. Do the Lego games count as movie tie-ins? Not sure but they aren’t bad.
Oh, yes – seconded on the Harry Potter games. Even though I hated the books and movies, I really liked the games.
Also Harry Potter Quidditch World Cup!
Oh yeah! I’ve mentioned it before, but my favorite tie-in game still has to be Chex Quest, though the Wendy’s RPG is pretty amazing to read, though probably not to play.
For the genre for Mount and Blade and Pirates!, I vote ‘mercenary sandbox’.
Ooh, yeah! “Mercenary” ties in both the violent individual and the economic aspects.
It doesn’t hurt that Mercenary was a series of well regarded late 1980s sci-fi games that were early examples of the genre.
Bless you, sir! It’s short, it’s punchy, it’s maybe not quite perfect, but it’s better than “Other”. I thank you, my games library thanks you, and the drop-down menu in my games launcher thanks you.
I’d like to toss the X series and Space Rangers into this pot as well, those games mostly being massive factional conflict and economy simulations in space. I wouldn’t include EVE Online however, since that’s virtual rather than simulated.
Simulation is obviously heart of these games, so “Sim” has to be part of the name. The other part seems to be the free accessibility of the simulation, meaning as many parts of it as possible are available for you to play with. This separates it from 4Xes and focused simulators, like Civilization and Cities: Skylines, which ask you to play a specific role or work towards a specific goal. I wouldn’t use “Sandbox” though, because that term denotes a static environment that primarily takes its cues from player actions, like Minecraft and its descendants. This unnamed genre is primarily about running its simulation, and a player agent’s actions are no more important than those of a simulated agent.
My candidates for a name would be “Strategic Sim”, “Systemic Sim”, “Emergent Sim”, or “Holistic Sim”.
I still like the “economic sim” styled nomenclature. Each of those games is very economy-focussed… but maybe, in the dark corner of my heart, I recognise that this may be one of those situations where the over-specification of style may be a detriment.
What about just being a sim game?
I’ve run into the same problem of what to call them a few times (considering it’s probably my favorite genre of games) and for simplicity’s sake I’ve always called them either “Pirates-like” or “Mount & Blade but…” depending on who I’m talking to. IE, Starsector is Mount & Blade but in space.
But for a proper name, there’s really no simple answer. Take my favorite, Microprose’s Sword of the Samurai. It’s a top-down action game AND a 1 on 1 fighter AND a RTS AND has a diplomacy/management overlay.
I’d optimally like the genre to have some sort of name, if only for the fact that there aren’t many more (if any other than Starsector) being made nowadays and proper nomenclature could give them some sort of exposure but I really don’t have an answer. Shouldn’t be impossible, though, even 4X games got their specific name eventually.
Speaking of 4X, how about CTM, for Combat, Trade, Manage?
Might work. The tagline for the X series is similar; “Trade. Fight. Build. THINK.”
If feel like there was one of these games that used an ecology rather than an economy, but I can’t remember what it was called. I might just be remembering the design for Spore that Maxis didn’t go with back when Electronic Arts was starting to REALLY be the EA we know today. I think I just made myself sad.
Are the Mechwarrior games mercenary sandboxes? Many of them have Mercenaries in the title!
Arguably, yes. Career mode in Harebrained Scheme’s Battletech definitely is. It doesn’t have the trading aspect that Pirates! or Mount & Blade does, but I think that trading matters less than fighting in most of these kinds of games, if only because you miss out on most of the games’ content if you focus primarily on trading. As long as you get the choice to take missions from whichever faction you’d like, I’d say it counts.
The popular tags on Steam tell me M&B is an Open-World Strategy Sandbox…
I’m not so sure. As the streamer keeps pointing out, it’s really hard to actually win if you just start being chased from the beginning and never get a breather.
Of course, I suppose the most likely consequence would be adjusting the rules to fit that playstyle.
I don’t have close to enough experience with the mode to say for sure (I’ve only watched one youtube video) but the danger I see like Pubg is that streamers and frequent players just play a degenerate strategy in order to achieve all action all the time. Pubg is supposed to be a drop in naked and afraid, scrounge, loot, hunt and avoid, then eventually make it to the center for a final showdown. Instead for streamers it became skip that all early and midgame stuff, drop at the hotly contested spots with the best loot and get in huge firefights. If I die, launch a new round, and repeat until I win and then move off with all the best loot to the middle where I shoot as many people as I can. They essentially cut out a large portion of the game which was the appeal to players (not necessarily watchers).
I feel for dedicated streamers of Survive the Hunt they’d just rush around the map trying to blow up a many pink cars as possible. If they die? Load up a new game. And if they win? Great. It doesn’t take too long before the normal way to play of hiding among the npcs becomes boring to watch and boring to play. For the average Joe who only plays a couple days a week it stays fresh since it’s a new way to play but for the streamer playing 8 hours a day 5 days a week that driving slow bit would become pure torture. The difference is that in Pubg if I don’t want to get in a firefight right away and want to scrounge and play as intended I can go to any smaller area of the map but if I’m playing Survive the Hunt and I’m a hunter who wants to hunt them down and try to expose them but they’re playing just rush it then my enjoyment is ruined. Instead of trying to outsmart the prey the first person in a blimp will immediately see him and call out his location because he’s ignoring all stealth.
I’m actually really looking forward to games like Cyberpunk 2077 but I don’t believe the delay is linked to the quality of the current game or the failed restarts of whatever. Seriously, CD Project don’t have so many developers on staff that they could do both The Witcher 2, The Witcher 3 and Cyberpunk within the same timeframe – bringing each to full production and quality levels. Witcher 2 released in 2011 and then Witcher 3 released in 2015 across multiple platforms, was a bigger game and had a newer, higher quality engine that scaled incredibly well.
The way I could read that Cyberpunk would begin in 2012 would be as a proof of concept, maybe with some art support. Even if it was restarted three times, that’s not a complete development restart. As Shamus says, you can’t do that – it’s too expensive and kills the direction of the game. CD Project are known for their tight direction and singular vision – this is not an Anthem sort of situation.
Anyway, to my original point. I would say (and have said in the past) that we’re seeing a lot of delays in game development because of the new consoles being right around the corner. I feel like there’s a concensus that to release a game twice (not counting GOTY editions) is more expensive in terms of development and other associated costs than to do all the work upfront and then release more than once. I don’t think that Cyberpunk was developed with the advances of the next gen consoles in mind but that there can be optimisations that will be able to be performed on the engine to get a lot out of those consoles.
I think that the majority of the delay will be a) optimising on the next gen consoles for a simultaneous release (and thus reduced marketing costs), b) court the associated marketing teams of the next generation consoles in order to gain some additional financial help in terms of that cost, c) Build hype alongside the next gen hardware hype. And I think that, to some extent, these factors are creating a lot of the delays we’re seeing announced for currently anticipated games.
I caught a fair bit of AGDQ. I’ve been following a variety of speedruns/runners for several years now and try to catch runs from games or runners I might be familiar with or follow, though picking one favourite run is tough. Some personal highlights:
Several of the races like Super Mario 3, Actraiser, The Legend of the Mystical Ninja, Megaman 4-6 relay and Ninja Gaiden II, which all turned out to be really close races. Terraria was quite special. Fallout Anthology was really entertaining. Mike Tyson’s Punch-out 2-player 1 controller blindfolded was ridiculous to witness. There was also a bullet-hell shmup called Mushihime-sama Futari 1.01 that was more of a high-score exhibition, but impressive stuff. Finally there was some Guitar Hero showcase that I haven’t seen yet, but will likely check out this week.
I started watched Survive The Hunt because of your article. I’ve only seen a few, but I’ve loved it. I started with the most recent and went backwards. I appreciate that for some of the later episodes, they’ve added a second video with commentary and a map to show some of the highlights. They have one non-participating player with his map turned on and he follows the action while recording so they can use it in the commentary video. It’s really interesting when the hunters pass up the prey sometimes, and just how close the calls are sometimes.
If RockStar (or anyone else) were to make an official mode, it would definitely change the gameplay a lot. Some of the interesting things are how the AI NPCs behave around real players and how the hunters use that to find the prey. In one episode the prey was at a stop-light and an NPC tried to push their way around (something that it wouldn’t do to another AI vehicle), and that’s how the hunter figured out that the car had a real player in it.
All of the episodes I’ve seen eventually result in a chase after the prey is discovered. Usually this ends badly for the prey, but a couple of times he has managed to get away and switch cars. I think he tries to outrun them too much, and would be better off going to an area with lots of short blocks, breaking line of sight and ditching the car quickly after a few quick turns, but maybe that strategy doesn’t work.
“The “big screen experience” is nice, but I don’t think it’s nice enough to offset all those other downsides.”
There’s a VR app called… “Bigscreen VR”. You can buy tickets to watch a limited selection of movies on a huge (virtual) screen, alone or with friends.
https://uploadvr.com/bigscreen-cinema-paramount-launch/
Cinema for me was always a social experience (I think I went only once to see a movie alone, out of dozens), it’s something to do with friends and family, the movie is just part of the experience. And now that social outings have mostly dried off, mostly with drifting apart from most of my friends (and those that remain aren’t interested in the big screen), I have barely been to the cinema these last few years.
Nice tie-in: LoTR return of the King.
I think that for the disparition of tie-in, it’s more a function of rising development costs than the public wising up (but it still played its part). I also forgot about the tie-in shovelware mobile games/web games, but there were a few for LoTR and GoT recently.