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honestly, i think there should be two types of games

a) hardcore games, for players like shane who buy newest fucking kickass consoles to play online or offline some shooting games. these games have the most kickass graphics and shit like that for players who like to see how well everything looks.
b) casual games, for players who don't have time to play all the time. they don't need to have most kickass graphics, but they need to be fun to play...

I think there should be even more than two types of games and I also think that "casual games" is the dumbest marketing term I know.

Locoroco bombed. Really.

Tetris is a non-figurative videogame... do you know any other examples?

_-_-__: But because nobody liked it, or because nobody likes the PSP? Also, define "bombed". Could the game have turned a profit for Sony if they hadn't invested more than they should in promoting it?

The two sides:

"Story in a game is like a story in a porn movie. It's expected to be there, but it's not that important." - John Carmack
"I suppose I could give you a list of the technical specs. I believe you would like that, but I won't for a simple reason; they really don't matter. The time when horsepower alone made an important difference is over." - Satoru Iwata.

take your pick.

Actually I wanted to talk about aesthetics of demos to tell the truth.. :]

The Loco Roco soundtrack would've done well in a demo I think. ;)

saying that loco roco doesnt mean anything technically per-se is bullshit too

some of the most "impressive" specular-blubber-laden "engines" sometime sliteraly are dumb toolchain-less pieces of d3dx laden shit

you say laden too much. I say we drink to that when I come back from South America.

Why are you talking about games here?
Shouldn't you really go make demos?

"The problem with technologically based graphics""
Besides the problem addressed in the initial post, technology based graphics will always look outdated within a couple of years...

Obvious fact maybe, but afaik only a few demomakers really try to avoid that.

Well I'm not too proud of the topic's title.. The developed idea is actually about how to use the technology we have now to make visuals that will be judged on their own merit, without attracting comments such as "shame it's not done with today's hardware."

.. when judged a few years later.

yeah I noticed :)
a beer-laden evening we'll have

doom: it didnt continuously sell at 30,000 copies a week, though, did it? because if it had it would be well past 1.5 million by now - which it isn't.
with that level of stat-bending you should be a politician.

smash: I'm not bending stats, I'm only asking, by what standard is 30.000 units a week "bombing", even if sales dropped subsequently? Obviously it wasn't profitable overall, but is that because the market didn't like it, or because there weren't enough PSP owners who liked it? And to what extent is that a reflection of the fact that there just aren't enough happy PSP owners? The PSP is in trouble because players aren't buying enough games in any category, so by that logic no type of game performs well. And how many units would Loco Roco have needed to sell if Sony hadn't spent all those millions on ads?

The question isn't even if Sony made money off the game, because they didn't try to. If they just wanted to sell as many copies as possible, there'd be versions out for Wii, NDS, PS2, XBox and Windows, maybe Macs cause the game is quite gay looking. But it was all about the PSP, not about the game.

Anyway, Joshua's point with his article seems to be that A) players aren't interested in games that don't display state-of-the-art realism, which is false (look at just about any Wii game, or how 75% of all people respond when they're shown a trailer for Loco Roco, and their disappointment when you say "PSP only") and that B) software developers don't believe such games are marketable, which quite clearly Sony did in the case of Loco Roco. For that matter, look at Super Mario Galaxy which seems like it's going to be a smash hit with graphics that are very low-tech for nearly-2008. The players don't care.

the game everybody is talking about.



that is pretty impressive i think. But the plotline like usual is a total letdown. Carmac nailed it when he said that the plot in a game is a little like a plot in a porn movie. You expect it to be there but nothing of it, and i have come to the point where a good story of funny concept will glue me to the screen for longer than just fancy visuals and jawdrop graphics.

Check out odin sphere, a very nice 2d hack'n'slash rpg for the ps2. scene graphic buffs will wet themself over this onegame link here??

i meant fancy effects and graphics..

wonder why anyone hasn't mentioned bioshock yet?

The 'plot' (or, well, backstory) in it was what kept me playing.. sure it was a pretty standard 'adult-oriented fps' plot, but it still managed to be the main reason why i felt like finishing that particular game at all.

Also the sound engineering was awesome. graphics were decent enough, and all in all the game almost had something i'd almost call 'style'. (unlike halo3 which feels like shooting looney tunes baddies in carebears land)..

Technically advanced computer graphics will look outdated ("crap") in a few years, but after waiting a few years more they'll look cool again.

Same with cars. Old cars are ugly, really old cars aren't.

we're living in the age of shader cowboys

Yihaa!