Doc wrote:Impressive knowledge there kyz. But Sensible Software, Cinemaware, Innerspace,Bloodhouse, Bitmap Brothers, Ocean etc. went bust due to piracy.
The piracy argument has never worked. The majority of games pirates are habitual thieves whose main concern is getting something for nothing, not their love of gaming. The would not buy games if they didn't pirate them. You cannot force these people to buy the games they pirate. If pirate copies were mysteriously not available, they would not buy the games they would otherwise have stolen.
Arguments made by games publishers that "piracy" is the cause of their woes are utter lies. They prefer to have a scapegoat they can put all the blame on. It avoids them having to say "we charged too high a price for these games, and not enough people bought them" or "we make boring games that aren't worth what we charge for them".
I have 10 games for my Playstation 2, but for only _2_ of those games did their creators see any profits from my purchase. Yes, I only thought that 2 of the games I bought were worth £40. All the others were bought second-hand. If the games were sold at £30 or less, I'd be far more likely to buy them first-hand. And I'm an avid gamer. Most console owners only buy about 5 games over the lifetime of their console. And for every single console game sold, Sony/Nintendo/Microsoft/Sega/whoever take a big, non-negotiable cut from the profits. You can make more money on a PC game than you can with a console game, but it has to be a big hit. In fact, it's thought that 95% of games produced make a loss rather than a profit. But imagine how much profit Sony have made from Everquest, or EA have made from The Sims.
Ocean did not go bust. They were bought out by Infogrammes, and I think Atari now owns them. It's not a terrible loss, Ocean were mostly known for publishing other people's games and making dire movie licenses in-house. The Bitmap Brothers are
still here. Cinemaware
have re-opened. Sensible were, as Jon Hare admits, badly managed. He's still working in the games industry, afaik, so we've only lost the brand name, not the talent. Bloodhouse were some demo coders that got lucky, and it seems they've now teamed up with some more demo coders. NEO (the austrian friends of Factor 5) are still here, despite their god-awful Tunnel B1. Factor 5 are still here, making kick-ass Star Wars games for the GameCube. Even Bullfrog is still here, now known as Lionhead Studios (black and white, etc). Steve Turner (of Graftgold fame) went back to IBM, as he found the games industry too stressful and unreliable as a source of income, compared to a corporate programming job in a huge faceless organisation.
Doc wrote:People at Cinemaware said so in their interviews. If thay had programmed for SNES, Squaresoft would eat shit. All they know is RPG.
I would have trouble calling anything that Cinemaware made an "RPG". Things like Wings and Rocket Ranger were more action adventures. Things like Ultima, Heroes of the Lance and Dungeon Master were computer RPGs. They were aimed at real-life role-playing gamers (as Baldur's Gate is today). Console RPGs (like Zelda, Final Fantasy, Breath of Fire, etc) were an invention of the Japanese, and are aimed at being cute and accessable, with more emphasis on their graphics and plot than their stats building and combat rules.
Doc wrote:But Amiga spirit ( as it was known is dead, capish ? ). No Worms will save it. No more Stardust, Dune or Battle Squadron. Nor their fantastic 2d graphics nor awesome music.
Well, I wouldn't say the Amiga "spirit" is dead, it lives on in the people who created all those wonderful games. For me, the spirit of the Amiga was CUSTOM CHIPS TO DO ALL THE WORK. This was rejected by the PC community, to their cost. Nowadays, they admit the Amiga was right, and every PC gamer has a dedicated graphics card and dedicated audio card. Every console has its own super dedicated graphics chips and sound chips. I also admired people who would trick the Amiga's hardware into giving 110%, which is also something that all the best games do. In fact, you may remember the special performance-analysing Playstation that developer got, allowing them to tweak their games to get 100% out of the graphics pipeline.
Sadly, the 2D scroller has gone the way of the dodo. Only retro freaks like myself still play these platformers and shoot-em-ups. The only games that get away with not being 3D these days are puzzlers. But then, I've really grown to like the first-person shooter and 3D RPGs/racers/platformers. I didn't like DOOM, because it was mindless blasting, but Half-Life had a fantastic plot. It really showed off what FPS games could be like, if they put a little time and effort in instead of just bolting some graphics on to an engine. GTA: VC is really immersive, you can lose track of time playing that. Like all good games, there's no real end to it. A fixed progression through games can be interesting, but there's limited value once the game is completed. Could you imagine a paint package that would make you draw the mona lisa every time you used it...?
The other thing is that the Amiga's awesome music came from the fact the people making it were AWESOME COMPOSERS. But, being composers, their skills can be transferred to a big-budget music studio. Their knowledge of harmony, melody, orchestration, etc can still be used. The Amiga was a step up on the lesser machines because it could play samples instead of limited synth sounds. Well, now you can have CD quality studio recorded music in your game, you don't have to use a channel-limited sample replayer with a small bunch of effects.
If you're interested, by the way, Geoff Crammond has agreed to remake Stunt Car Racer, but only if his financier gives him complete artistic control over the game. No games publishers have taken him up on his offer yet. And you wonder why I moan about games publishers.